Abby Moloughney’s Penalty Shot Goal Earns Syracuse Overtime Win Over Lindenwood

By David Edelstein

CitrusTV Ice Hockey Reporter

Abby Moloughney was the only Syracuse player wearing an Orange helmet during warmups before Friday’s game against Lindenwood, not because she put on the wrong uniform for the day, but because she lost the team shootout during Thursday’s practice.

Thus, it was fitting that Moloughney was awarded a penalty shot in overtime and scored the game-winner to earn the Orange (9-19-3, 9-6-2 College Hockey America) a 5-4 victory over the Lions (7-19-3, 3-12-2) in Tennity Ice Pavilion.

“I knew she was going to score. I absolutely knew,” Emma Polaski said. “She lost the shootout actually yesterday in practice. So we were definitely like ‘she’s going to redeem herself and score this one.’”

41 seconds into overtime, Lindenwood’s Hannah Alt was called for holding while Moloughney was on a clear breakaway toward the net. This left SU Head Coach Paul Flanagan with a choice to make.

“You always get the opportunity, you can take the power play and have the two-minute power play and get, you’d like to think, a few chances, or you get that one chance, so we accepted the penalty shot,” Flanagan said.

In a game tied at 4-4, the freshman forward was given a free shot with just her and the goalie on the ice.

“I was pretty nervous. I just thought, you know, ‘do what you can. Do your best,’” Moloughney said. “It was pretty nerve-wracking. Especially as a freshman, I feel a lot of weight on my shoulders to put that in, and I just was patient with it, looked for an opening and put it where I saw it.”

There was added rivalry between Moloughney and freshman goalie Sophie Wolf as both played on the same club team, the Nepean Jr. Wildcats.

“They know each other, so you don’t know if the goalie knows what Abby’s going to do; does Abby know how I can fool the goalie,” Flanagan said.

Moloughney skated from center ice and made a wide turn to the right. She then skated a sharp left right in front of the goal and put the puck in the top of the net over Wolf’s right shoulder.

“I had a pretty good idea [of what I was going to do],” Moloughney said. “It’s kind of a move that I’ve been practicing for a bit. I usually have a go-to, but I decided to try something different, and it worked.”

“At first when she made that move, I thought, ‘uh oh. She’s running out of real estate,’” Flanagan said. “But she just, it was actually a pretty nice shot to have that little room to get it up top, because I thought the goalie had her.”

This moment capped off an epic comeback as Syracuse scored two goals within the first three minutes of the third period to tie the game, 4-4. Lindsay Eastwood scored 2:00 into the final frame on a 5-on-3. Polaski tied it up 54 seconds later on a 5-on-4 power play.

Lindenwood had been called for hooking at 49 seconds into period three and and slashing at 1:17, opening the ice for SU and Coach Flanagan’s girls got it done.

SU has now won all three games against Lindenwood this season. The Orange and the Lions face off for the last time this regular season as Syracuse plays its final home game of the year on Saturday at 3:00 p.m.

dzedelst@syr.edu | @DavidZEdelstein