Allie Olnowich’s clear should’ve ended the second period with Syracuse and Mercyhurst locked at one apiece. But it didn’t.

Maggie Knott intercepted the pass and pushed forward. She passed the puck to forward Emma Nuutinen who noticed the Lakers had a three to one advantage. Knott raised her arm, waving for a pass, as she crept toward SU goalkeeper Maddi Welch. Olnowich fell on her chest trying to contain Knott as she laid on the ground with nowhere to go.

Nuutinen slung the puck to Summer-Rae Dobson who bobbled it as the clock neared single digits. Dobson relayed it back to Knott. Her low wrist shot caught Welch off guard, sneaking past the senior to give Mercyhurst a 2-1 lead with 9.4 seconds left.

“We got a little lazy as the clock was ticking down,” SU head coach Paul Flanagan said. “The timing was just awful.”

The Orange left the rink in shock. Players started to dwell on the last second blunder, Flanagan said. Syracuse (0-2, 0-1 College Hockey America) trailed the rest of the game against Mercyhurst (1-4, 1-0) in an eventual 4-2 loss. The Orange couldn’t sustain the momentum it held for the game’s first 40 minutes, and didn’t muster a third-period comeback.

The Lakers and Orange played identically in the first period. Every SU opportunity was followed by a Mercyhurst response. But nothing came out of the combined 30 shots as both teams remained scoreless.

Going into the second, the two exchanged six power plays included a one-minute three on five opportunity for Syracuse that led to nothing. Midway through the second, the Lakers’ Vilma Tanskanen maneuvered past Welch to make it 1-0. The Orange responded 90 seconds later off of a Jessica Digirolamo slap shot on the green line.

“Things were pretty close,” Flanagan said. “They were doubling us down.”

As SU and MU exchanged power play opportunities, both overmatched each other with defense late in the second, waiting for one to break through. It appeared a third period would determine who would take the advantage after three-straight advantages were squandered. But it didn’t.

Off a faceoff near the Mercyhurst goal, the Orange came out in an offensive zone. It tried to play shoot the puck forward to accelerate the period’s final 30 seconds, SU’s Dakota Derrer said. Derrer slid a pass to Olnowich who tried to careen it off the board near the Lakers’ sideline.

When Knott intercepted it, Olnowich was flat on the ice, swinging her stick with her chest down. Knott looped around her, eventually scoring the go-ahead score.

“It was a bloop play,” Derrer said. “We lost our puck in the offensive zone…It just changed the energy of the game.”

Flanagan stayed on the bench after the goal. When the period ended, he waited for his players to enter locker room before rising from the bench and walking in. Despite a three-goal period that featured a multitude of prominent moments, SU’s last play was the only thing brought up by the players.

They couldn’t get it out of their mind, Digirolamo said.

“I can’t go in there and be a cheerleader all the time,” Flanagan said. “…It was really hard to pull them out of that disappointment.”

Flanagan said he could sense his player’s attitude the minute he walked into the locker room. But unlike them, he stayed optimistic, imploring them that there was still 20 minutes left to play.

Seconds into the third, Abby Moloughney jumped on the faceoff and hooked a shot toward the Mercyhurst net, ultimately landing into the mitt of its goalie. After Moloughney’s jump, SU fell flat and couldn’t advance the puck.

Knott snuck past a pair of defenders again six minutes into the third and made it a two-goal advantage for the Lakers. The Orange’s only hope came off a Lauren Bellefontaine power play goal which cut the lead back to one, but Mercyhurst responded three minutes later, running the score up to 4-2.

When Syracuse accepted its first deficit of the game seconds before going into the third with a tie, the gridlock of the first two periods were lost, Flanagan said. The Orange tried to regroup but were stuck in place.

“We (were) really low,” Derrer said, “and we should have came back harder.”

Published on October 12, 2018 at 11:25 pm

Contact KJ: kjedelma@syr.edu | @KJEdelman