WICE takes care of business against Mercyhurst

By Luke McGrath Syracuse, N.Y. – The women’s ice hockey team took down conference rival Mercyhurst 3-0 Friday night putting them one step closer to a first round bye in the CHA tournament.

With a win tomorrow the Orange would need just one more point to secure the one or two seed.

The Syracuse attack was consistent all night, but it took a while to see that on the score sheet.

Neither side was able to break through early in the game with strong play in net by both teams. Syracuse was also denied twice early in the first period by the post.

With just under a minute to play in the first and just seconds into a Syracuse power play, the Orange broke through.

Freshman forward Savannah Rennie buried home the first goal of the game on a pass from her line mate junior forward Emily Costales.

In the second period, neither side was able to find the back of the net, but that changed quickly once the third period began.

Just over a minute into the final frame, junior forward Alysha Burriss broke the silence when she netted her wrist shot past sophomore goaltender Sarah McDonnell. Jessica Sibley assisted the goal.

Burriss was not done, with under five minutes to play she put the game on ice with a wrist shot that bounced around and somehow found the back of the net.

Burriss’s goal was assisted by Heather Schwarz and was the second power play goal of the night for the Orange.

Syracuse has struggled on the power play this year scoring on just %13.3 of their opportunities. But Friday night the Orange converted two of their four chances.

Burriss says the key to her lines success on the power play is just forgetting about the past.

“The unit that I’m on, we’ve been struggling a little bit and we have been trying to figure out why and we just came to practice yesterday [Thursday] and we were like let’s just have a clean slate,” Burriss said. “Instead of making up excuses or thinking of reasons why it’s not working, let’s think of how it can work.”

Head coach Paul Flanagan thinks the power play has been creating chances all season for the Orange and tonight the team capitalized.

“There have been occasions where we struggled on the score sheet but we generated chances and we really lately have been moving the puck around pretty well and generating chances,” Flanagan said. “Sooner or later they’re going to go in and tonight they did for us.”

The Orange plays Mercyhurst again on Saturday at 3:00 PM at the Tennity Ice Pavilion.