Holly Carrie-Mattimoe knew Syracuse had to play a near-perfect game if it wanted to upset No. 3 Cornell.

For almost two periods, that’s exactly what the Orange did. The SU players skated with the nationally ranked squad, matching them shot-for-shot, stop-for-stop.

But after more than 17 minutes had passed in the second period, SU eventually let up.

‘I think we were playing perfect until the last couple minutes in the second there,’ Carrie-Mattimoe, an SU forward, said. ‘And those couple of lapses we had, that cost us.’

Although Syracuse played a much-improved game against the Big Red compared to the previous time these two teams faced off, the Orange (8-14-2, 0-2-2 College Hockey America)  couldn’t overcome a couple of mistakes along the way, resulting in a 6-3 loss to Cornell (16-2-0, 11-1-0 Eastern College Athletic Conference) in front of 154 at Tennity Ice Pavilion on Tuesday. SU looked to be ready to pull off a colossal upset and avenge the 9-2 beating it took from the Big Red on Nov. 1. But two costly turnovers transformed the game and gave Cornell the momentum and a lead it wouldn’t relinquish.

With 2:44 left in the second period and Syracuse leading 2-1, the Orange attempted to clear the puck but failed. The puck got caught on an Orange player’s pad, resulting in a loose puck in front of SU’s net.

Cornell’s Rebecca Johnston passed the loose puck up to teammate Brianne Jenner, who scored an easy goal on a defenseless Kallie Billadeau in net to the tie the game.

A minute later, another ill-advised play once again cost Syracuse. SU defender Kaillie Goodnough couldn’t handle a pass, and the puck ended up with Cornell forward Jillian Saulnier.

She had nothing but the net in front of her. Although she missed her original shot, the freshman forward followed her own shot along the boards. Saulnier passed to a cutting Johnston, who finished off the play with a backhanded score to give the Big Red a 3-2 edge.

‘For us to give that team the momentum back going into the intermission, that wasn’t devastating, but it certainly wasn’t good,’ SU head coach Paul Flanagan said. ‘I thought we were riding pretty high. We were playing well. We had some jump, some confidence. It’s one thing to give up the one, but the second one was a little painful to watch.’

And going into the third period, it only got harder to watch for Flanagan on the bench.

Four minutes into the third period, Cornell scored some insurance when forward Chelsea Karpenko slapped a shot past Billadeau’s right shoulder. And then forward Erin Barley-Maloney netted her first goal less than 30 seconds later to put the Big Red up 5-2.

Carrie-Mattimoe said after those two second-period goals, she could sense the Syracuse bench becoming more hushed and losing some of the momentum it had before.

On the opposite side, Cornell’s head coach Doug Derraugh said once his squad scored one goal, it was looking for more.

‘Sometimes you get on a bit of a roll,’ Derraugh said. ‘You get a couple and that just gets everything going.’

Early on, the Orange was the team rolling along, taking the lead two separate times, something SU didn’t accomplish when Syracuse fell by seven goals to the Big Red in their earlier meeting.

SU freshman Nicole Ferrara tapped the puck in past Cornell goaltender Amanda Mazzotta following a slap shot from Margot Scharfe to put Syracuse up 1-0 early in the first period.

Syracuse went on top again when Carrie-Mattimoe snuck past the entire Big Red defense and sent a top-shelf missile past Mazzotta to put the Orange ahead 2-1. Both times, the Orange bench exploded, knowing how critical it was to keep pace early with a usually dominant Cornell team.

But ultimately, Syracuse couldn’t keep that impressive play going for a full game. SU was at its best for more than half the game.

The problem was Syracuse needed perfection for the entire game.

Said SU forward Megan Skelly: ‘You definitely have to play them close for a 60-minute game instead of a 40-minute game to get a win.’

dgproppe@syr.edu

Published on January 17, 2012 at 12:00 pm