Re: BC Women's Hockey, 2015-2016: Embrace The Cupcake Diet
The Northeastern game was a lot of fun. I only got there for the end of the second and all of the third; I understand the start was less compelling, but what we got in the third period in particular was fine hockey. I thought BC were clearly the better team at puck possession and movement, but in a callback to last year's power play seemed to prefer passing to shooting and didn't generate as many top quality chances as you might expect. Northeastern seemed to be more willing to take a shot on goal and throw bodies at the crease, and there were a number of plays that seemed to go on forever where the puck was somewhere in a scrum in front of the BC net and everything looked very dangerous. The BC forecheck was also less aggressive than usual, in part because they held D-men back to cover any possible breakaway.
The lines were swapped around so last year's first line of Carp-Skarupa-Kent was back on. Kent has developed her own personality as a player now, a little bulldog like Trivigno, chippy and athletic. Carp was shut down effectively, but more than that seemed to be low-energy by her standards; she wasn't putting out the sheer amount of wattage that you usually see. Hopefully just a temporary blip. Skarupa was fantastic, probably player of the game, certainly best player of the game to get zero points. Great on the backcheck, enormously creative getting the puck up the ice, plenty of hard shots on the pads where a linemate in the right place to get a rebound could have been dangerous. In general the linemates weren't there to the usual extent or she would definitely have been on the board.
Second (I suppose) line was Grieves-Anastos-Sullivan. Weirdly, for a player with two goals, Sullivan was almost invisible for a lot of the period, and I say that as a big fan of her hard-working game. Anastos played as smart as ever but looked very tired. Grieves was great as always, an absolute torpedo in a straight line, and her goal to go 2-1 up was well deserved and came in the middle of a five-minute stretch where she was the most explosive player on the ice.
Third line was Capizzano-Trivigno-Newkirk. Capizzano was fantastic in the corners but was beaten in foot races more often than you usually see. Trivigno anchored the line solidly. Newkirk didn't get any points but the more the season goes on the clearer it is that she's an elite talent, not afraid to get physical and with a ton of strength and creativity.
Fourth line got the night off...
Among the defensemen, the most defensive-minded of them stood out: Johnson was a complete star, doing what she usually does at our end of the ice but bringing the puck forward with strength as well. Her goal that turned out to be the GWG was a great capper to an excellent night. Miano was also her usual excellent self, willing to do anything to stop the puck going in. Keller keeps getting better every game; she wins the puck in the corner, she takes it over the blue line, she makes an excellent pass, she does it again.
On the Northeastern side, Coyne was good but was contained well, and Scamurra and Krisova lived up to their billing. I was very impressed by Kasidy Anderson, who was very strong on the puck and well positioned in the neutral zone to take advantage of passes or turnovers. Bugalski was good -- she wasn't called on to make extraordinary saves but was in general in the right place, though on the Youtube highlights it seems like she lost her focus and got tempted way too far out of the net on the first period goal and perhaps overcompensated by staying very tight in in the later part of the game.
Some of the BC choices seemed a little defensive. There was one time where the SUPERLINE was put out against a non-Coyne NU line and the defensemen were Miano and Johnson, our most stay-at-home pairing. There was another time when Johnson was out with Bender, our highest-scoring D, and Johnson was the one up front and Bender was the one behind. To be honest I felt that NU was good but not on the same plane as BC and that we were being perhaps too scared of a Kendall Coyne who had failed to do us any significant damage last season. But I'm not the coach and we did get the W.
On a different note: it was alumni weekend, the band was there, the turnout was good for BC WIH at at least 300 (and I'm sure it will be reported as 600+) and, although it takes a lot of people to make Conte feel full, the atmosphere was much more electric than for most regular season games. The Alumni weekend resulted in a huge turnout of Eagles WIH alumni, including people who'd obviously come out of town to be there, so that was nice, and my D was able to get Molly Schaus to stand by the cardboard cut-out of Molly Schaus in the entrance and thereby prove that she was in fact Molly Schaus.
