HAMDEN, Conn. — The No. 9/10 Quinnipiac Bobcats came close to upsetting the No. 3/3 Cornell Big Red, but could not hold, on as the ECAC matchup ended in a 1-1 overtime tie at the High Point Solutions Arena.
Emily Fulton tied the game for Cornell (5-0-1, 3-0-1 ECAC) with 7:57 left to play in the third period on a penalty shot that barely trickled past Quinnipiac (7-1-2, 2-1-1 ECAC) goaltender Chelsea Laden.
“I wasn’t sure whether it was going to go in at first, but I think she just squeezed it through [Laden’s] legs and got the goal,” Cornell coach Doug Derraugh said.
Cydney Roesler was whistled for tripping on the play when Fulton had a breakaway and Roesler dove to break up the play and got a piece of Fulton with her stick to trip her up.
“The mistakes happened early, we shouldn’t have passed the puck to the point, our defensemen shouldn’t have tried to make something happen,” Quinnipiac coach Rick Seeley said. “You have to play almost perfectly to win a game like that, and I thought we were pretty close. A critical mistake like that and it’s a tie game, but it’s still a 1-1 tie against the third-ranked team in the country and the first place team in our conference.”
Quinnipiac had initially jumped out to a 1-0 lead with 4:31 left to play in the second period when Shiann Darkangelo wristed a short-handed goal beneath the glove of Cornell netminder Lauren Slebodnick after Amanda Colin stole the puck around the blue line.
“Amanda did a great job of controlling the puck in the neutral zone and then on entry created some time and space for Shiann,” Seeley said. “It was a great, quick release on the shot.”
The Bobcats had gone on the penalty kill a minute before the goal when Taryn Baumgardt was whistled for interference.
Goaltending was the story for both teams, as Slebodnick stopped 28 of 29 shots while Laden picked up 26 saves on 27 shots in the tie.
“I thought she was real steady early on; you can see she was on her game, she made some saves early for us,” Derraugh said. “Like I said, I didn’t think we had a great first period; we were a little bit slow. That’s when you need your goalie to come up with a few big saves and then I think that settled the whole team down.”
Both teams struggled on the power play, with Quinnipiac going 0-4 while Cornell was 0-2 on the man-up opportunities, but the Big Red took advantage of the penalty shot after starting off the game slow, according to Derraugh.
“We just needed to move the puck a little bit quicker early on, then in the second period I thought we came out a little better, took a bad penalty there early on and lost momentum a little bit,” Derraugh said. “We hung in there; we battled hard and got a point in a building that’s a tough place to get a point.”
