U.S. women conclude 32-0 pre-Olympic run with 7-0 victory
SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH — The most graphic difference between the men and women playing hockey in the Winter Olympic Games is the scope of their competition.
The men start play Saturday with the first of three phases of competition, a hectic schedule that will see eight teams play down to two winners, who will advance to the “final” round-robin groupings, who determine the pairings for the final-elimination quarterfinal phase. And most experts agree that at least six teams stand a very good chance of being in the hunt for the gold.
On the women’s side, however, Team USA is a prohibitive favorite to sweep to the gold, in pool play that commences Monday. Only Team Canada is projected to have a chance to challenge the mighty U.S. outfit, and the Americans have beaten Canada all eight times they have met in exhibitions since September.
The U.S. women provided the final evidence of its power on Thursday night by running off a 7-0 victory over Russia in an exhibition game at the E Center. The U.S., which won the gold in 1998 at Nagano, thus concluded its pre-Olympic schedule with a perfect 32-0 record, and opens Olympic competition Tuesday against Germany at the E Center.
Russia, which was the surprise of the 2001 World Championships by beating Finland and Sweden out for the bronze medal, opens competition Monday 11 February against Sweden at Peaks Arena. But the 7-0 game proved the disparity between the world’s best women’s team and a team that could well end up third.
Team USA kept continual pressure on the Russians from the outset of their exhibition, taking a 3-0 lead by outshooting Russia 12-6 in the first period, and raising the margin to 5-0 with a 15-2 second-period edge in shots, then finishing with a 14-4 shot edge for a 41-12 total. And while six different players got goals, it was the U.S. hustling but light-scoring third line that was the best in the game, led by Tricia Dunn’s two goals and three assists.
“I think before this, the most points I’ve gotten in a game was two,” said Dunn, who is from Derry, N.H., after her five-point night. “The Russians played a good game. They were physical, and they moved the puck well at times. Our line [with Julie Chu at center and Andrea Kilbourne at right wing] comes out to really forecheck, to spark things, get things going. Whatever we score is a bonus.”
Chu, one of the youngest U.S. players at age 19, opened the scoring at 2:58 of the first period, taking a pass from Dunn from behind the net. Kilbourne, who also assisted on the first goal, got her second of three assists in the game by feeding from behind the net to A.J. Ruggiero, who had moved in from defense and shot the puck into the upper right corner at 11:00.
Team USA’s power play made it 3-0, when once and future UMD star Jenny (Schmidgall) Potter, at the right of the net, relayed the puck from Katie King to Karyn Bye, who scored from in front at 15:56.
The Russian team, with UMD freshman forward Kristina Petrovskaia listed as a defenseman but roving freely all over the ice, tried to bunch defensively in the second period in front of goaltender Irina Gashennikova. That kept the U.S. off the scoreboard for the first 12 minutes of the session, it also meant the Russians rarely threatened U.S. goalie Sarah Tueting.
The U.S. finally did connect in the second period, when Chu’s pass from behind the goal found Dunn open for a quick shot into the upper right at 12:25. King then redirected Bye’s shot in and it was 5-0. The beat went on in the third period, as the U.S. added two power-play goals, with Dunn and Cammi Granato both scoring off feeds from Brooklyn Park’s Krissy Wendell.
“Russia played a great team game,” said Potter. “We won 7-0, but Russia is very well coached and worked together well. This was a good win for us.”
Dunn agreed. “People talk about pressure, and who it’s on, but I think pressure depends on each individual. If we just focus on what we have to do, we’ll be successful. Our focus is within our 20 players and our coaches, and it’s on getting better every game. This helped us get our feet wet on the Olympic sheet.”
Edwardson’s last minute goal gives East 3-3 tie with Hibbing
Hibbing-Chisholm girls hockey coach Pete Hyduke said he was concerned as his Bluejackets got off the bus at the DECC Tuesday night. “You’ve got to be ready to play,” said Hyduke. “You can’t go into a game expecting things to go your way.”
Hyduke’s worries were well-founded, because Duluth East’s steadily improving Greyhounds weathered everything the ‘Jackets could throw at them — including Andrea Nichols’ third goal of the game with 1:22 remaining in the third period — and pulled out a 3-3 tie when Linnea Edwardson scored her second goal of the game with 37 seconds left in regulation.
Hibbing outshot East 7-1 in the 8-minute overtime, but Greyhound goaltender Jane Gilbertson, only a freshman, finished off her 27-save performance by stopping them all. The closest call amid constant pressure in overtime was a falling-down attempt by Nichols that glanced off the far pipe to the left.
This is an unusual season in Section 7. Hibbing dropped down from Class AA to Class A this season, but the Bluejackets remain the most prominent girls hockey power in the Northland, and are the team by which Class AA teams will measure themselves. That being the case, East measured up very well with this performance, and now stands 15-5-1. Hibbing, which has scheduled an extremely tough schedule around the state, is 11-6-4, and this was the Bluejackets seventh overtime of the season, in which they have lost only one time while going 2-1-4.
East coach Jack Shearer put together an interesting game plan, sending his second line of Lis Sieh, Anne Gilbertson and Marcy Stech out against Hibbing’s spectacular first line, which has Nichols at center, and senior Krista Simonson and freshman Kayla Hagen at the wings. They did as good a job as could be expected, but Nichols broke free several times, and almost beat the Greyhounds singlehandedly, while running her personal statistics up to 37 goals, 20 assists for 57 points.
Nichols scored first at 11:51 of the first period, winning a right corner faceoff and barging to the net to beat Jane Gilbertson for a 1-0 lead. That seemed like it might lead to a runaway, because Hibbing was outshooting East 11-4 in the opening period. But in the final minute of the first session, Katie DeBoer scored for East with 58 seconds left for a 1-1 tie.
Hibbing lost junior forward Sara Anderson with what is feared to be a serious knee injury in the second period, but the game stayed 1-1 until 1:31 was left. Edwardson, a sophomore, went hard to the net and, as she fell to her knees, she smacked the puck past Brittany Krause. That gave East an improbable 2-1 lead at the second intermission, but the Hounds had gained momentum as they gained confidence and outshot Hibbing 9-3 in the middle period.
Hibbing still trailed 2-1 with 9:33 gone in the third period, but at that point, Nichols tore out of her end with a pass from Hagen, sped around the defense on the right, and cut to the net to score an eye-popping goal to tie the game.
With 1:22 left, Nichols cruised at center ice until East’s Becky Fisher tried to throw a behind-the-back pass from the right boards. Nichols intercepted and was gone in a flash, scoring again on a breakaway after bursting past the last Greyhound at the blue line.
It appeared that East’s spirited effort would fall just short, but in the final minute, the Hounds rushed and just as Jane Gilbertson went to the bench for a sixth skater, Fisher — an East captain who was celebrating her birthday — made up for her errant pass with a powerful rush deep up the left side. She fired the puck across the goal mouth, and Edwardson flicked it into the net from the right edge at 14:37.
“East started to believe in themselves and got stronger as the game went on,” said Hyduke. “I felt we were flat getting goff the bus, but we didn’t quit. But East did a good job of collapsing in the defensive zone, and they didn’t give us much.”
In the first game of the DECC doubleheader, Denfeld-Central whipped Greenway of Coleraine 6-0. The victory, even by such a score, wasn’t a big surprise against the struggling Raiders, but most impressive, Denfeld-Central played without two of its top offensive threats, in freshman Tawni Mattila and eighth-grader Ashley Youngblom. Mattila was out after having a tonsilectomy, and Youngblom is sidelined with a knee injury suffered in practice. Veronica Surges, who has been alternating in goal, was ill and also missed the game, but the Devils never missed a beat.
MacMillan, Badgers make it a double dip of upsets over UMD
We all knew that parity would come to women’s college hockey, someday. It’s just that nobody anticipated that it would arrive with a thump — or make that a thump-thump — in one series at the DECC.
The University of Wisconsin, sputtering through a season of underachievement and possible unrest, rose up to stun the Women’s WCHA when they beat No. 1 ranked UMD 3-1 on Sunday night to snap the Bulldogs 23-game unbeaten streak. The smart money said the Bulldogs would start a new streak in Monday night’s rematch, but the Badgers beat the previously unbeaten Bulldogs again — this time 3-2.
The double-dip of defeats drops UMD to 8-2-2 and throws a serious wrinkle into WCHA title hopes, while lowering the overall record to 13-2-3. Wisconsin rose to 8-5-1 and 9-8-2 overall.
There may have been an extremely unusual ulterior motive within the top-secret Badger dressing room. Reports of dissatisfaction between the Badger players and first-year head coach Trina Bourget, who was interim coach last season, have not been verified, but speculation was widespread when Bourget didn’t come to Duluth with the Badgers. Instead, assistant Dan Koch called the shots on the bench, working with fellow-assistant and recruiting specialist Tracey Cornell.
Koch insisted Bourget’s absence was “for a personal family emergency,” and nobody challenged that claim. But if the players indeed wanted to vent their feelings about their coach, the best way to prove it might be to knock off the best team in the nation in her absence. Twice.
That’s exactly what the Badgers did, following the same script Monday as the night before, which was to let junior goaltender Jackie MacMillan — a Duluth native who said she still comes to Duluth to celebrate holidays with her grandparents and great-grandmother — simply get in the way of everything the Bulldogs could throw at the net. A deep and talented defensive corps mostly prevented any close-in invasions of the defensive zone in the first place, and cleared away any rebounds that long shots might produce.
UMD coach Shannon Miller, who was decidedly upbeat after Sunday’s 3-1 loss, which included an open-net goal at the finish to snap UMD’s 23-game unbeaten streak, had a more stern demeanor after the second loss in two nights. She huddled with assistants Stacy Wilson and Shawna Davidson for 15 minutes after the game, then the three of them marched like soldiers into the closed dressing room, where the ensuing lecture lasted another half-hour.
“We played well again tonight,” Miller said later. “But Wisconsin played with much more heart. They were 20 players all pulling together, on the ice and on the bench, where they were loud and they were strong all night. We had 12 or 13 players who played at that level, and that wasn’t enough to carry us.”
The Bulldogs outshot Wisconsin 36-24, including a 14-4 domination of the third period. But the Bulldogs were a little ragged in their team discipline, taking two penalties each period while the Badgers took one penalty each period. The difference was, UMD scored once on three power-play chances, when Joanne Eustace scored at 7:10 of the third period, halving the 3-1 deficit the Badgers had built during the first two periods.
The Badgers, meanwhile, scored all three goals on power plays, with Steph Millar scoring midway through the first period, Meghan Hunter deflecting a Sis Paulsen shot past goaltender Patricia Sautter at 13:09 for a 2-0 first-period lead, and Jackie Friesen scored on a rebound at 12:14 of the second to boost the Badgers to 3-1.
“We totally dominated 5-on-5, but we had to have the self-discipline to not take selfish penalties,” said Miller. “We’ve got to have the ‘we before me’ thing. We talked about it in the dressing room and on the bench.”
After outshooting the Badgers 36-25 but losing to MacMillan’s brilliant goaltending in the first game, the Bulldogs seemed to settle down after falling behind 2-0 in the first period. Hanne Sikio snapped things back into order at 0:17 of the second, when she broke away clean and zoomed in to score, deking to her right and scoring with a backhand inside the right post.
But the Badgers didn’t flinch. They killed a penalty, then got another power play of their own, and Friesen’s goal was the result. Millar, after scoring the first goal from the right side, assisted on the Hunter and Friesen goals.
Still, the Bulldogs had the last eight minutes of the second period, and the full third period to catch up, but all they could muster was Eustace’s goal, on the rebound of Maria Rooth’s power-play shot. The Bulldogs put on considerable pressure after that, and had a big flurry in front of the Badger net with three minutes to go, but MacMillan was solid. UMD outshot Wisconsin 36-24 — almost exactly the same as the first game — but MacMillan made 34 saves to Sautter’s 21.
Wisconsin was smarting from 1-0 and 2-1 losses to a UMD team that was without its top Finnish and Swedish players early in the season at Madison, and came to Duluth intent on exacting some self-respect. After playing with fire, and MacMillan’s glove, the Badgers played with ever-increasing confidence throughout the two games. After Eustace’s goal closed the gap to 3-2, the Badgers forechecked one skater and always had at least three skaters falling back defensively.
“Duluth is a great team,” said Koch. “The first 10 minutes, they came out to send a message. But our plan was to give them shots from the blue line, and then only one. They put on a lot of pressure in the last 10 minutes, but our wings came back with discipline and stayed with ’em.”
Koch was told that Miller said that the Badgers have the best defensive corps in the country. “We have a good defensive corps,” he said. “But they have some of the best forwards in the country. Our girls were really hungry. We’ve had a lot of games where we haven’t gotten any bounces, and we wanted to work hard enough to create some bounces for ourselves.”
Call it intensity, or hunger, or determination. Whatever it is, the Badgers had it, and only some of the Bulldogs did. The unbeaten streak is gone for the Bulldogs, and so, undoubtedly, is the No. 1 spot in the national rankings. But one scene, long after the game was over, might provide a spark if the two teams happen to meet in the league playoffs. Several Badgers went back out on the dark, deserted DECC ice sheet with a broom, and had their picture taking as they shouted, “Who’s got the sweep now?”
Duluth-born Badger goalie beats UMD women 3-1 to snap streak
Jackie MacMillan said the times she has enjoyed the most, playing in goal for Wisconsin, are when the opponent is of high caliber and she faces a lot of shots. She didn’t have to add that she knew she could find both of those elements, as well as a family homecoming of sorts, when the Badgers came to Duluth for a key Women’s-WCHA series.
MacMillan, a junior who was born in Duluth, made 36 saves Sunday night to shut down the high-scoring UMD offense to inflict a 3-1 defeat on the last team in the nation to stand undefeated. The Bulldogs rallied with increasing pressure through the third period, but the outcome of the first game of the unusual Sunday-Monday series was assured when Megan Hunter scored into an empty net with 20 seconds remaining.
The loss ends the Bulldogs undefeated streak after 23 straight games, a 19-0-4 stretch dating back to a 6-5 overtime loss last Feb. 17 at St. Cloud, and leaves the No. 1 ranked ‘Dogs 8-1-2 in the WCHA and 13-1-3 overall. Wisconsin climbs to 7-5-1 in the WCHA and 8-8-2 overall — not bad, but a far cry from where the Badgers anticipated being at this point.
“They’re a great team,” said MacMillan. “You know when you play them you’ve got to be at your best. They come at you hard in the offensive zone, and you know you’re probably only going to get a couple goals against them, so I’ve got to keep them to none, or one. But I have fun playing a team of this caliber, and I’m at my best when I’m facing a lot of shots. Tonight, the puck looked like a beach ball coming to me, and my defense allowed me plenty of room to see the shots.
“This is probably the best game I’ve played since the last time we played here, last year. I was born in Duluth but my family moved when I was about 3. We lived in Menomenie, New Ulm and then Buffalo (Minn.), but this is where we come to celebrate all the holidays. I have a lot of family here. My grandparents still live here, and my great-grandmother was at the game tonight. I was real excited to come up here and play.
“We’re also excited about starting like it’s a new season.”
The Badgers had started off 6-2-2, with the only losses being 2-1 and 1-0 to UMD, which was playing without five stars who were with the Finnish and Swedish National teams. After the strong start, the Badgers nosedived to six losses in the last seven games before a month-long holiday break. They came to Duluth and beat the Bulldogs, who also had been off for almost a month, but who had all their top players back.
“I felt we played well enough to win,” said UMD coach Shannon Miller. “Usually I’m upset after a loss, but I really, totally thought we played well tonight. MacMillan made some beautiful saves against our power play. We did a lot of things well. We flew a player every shift, just to pull their defense back, and we made the long pass enough times to do more with our chances.
“But we had trouble getting to the net because their six defensemen are the best in the country. And in the last few minutes of the game, they clogged up the middle so well it looked like they had six goaltenders.”
The Bulldogs opened the game exchanging threats with the Badgers as if it was inevitable they would score. When MacMillan matched Tuula Puputti to hold the score at 0-0 through the first period, the inevitability became more questionable. Bulldogs made it easier for Wisconsin to shut them down by taking a succession of penalties, spaced out through the opening period. Both teams had two-man power plays, without scoring.
At 4:07 of the second period, however, Wisconsin’s Steph Millar shot from the right side, Puputti blocked it, but the puck landed in the left edge of the crease and Amy Vermeulen knocked in the rebound for a 1-0 Wisconsin lead. At 14:48 of the second period, Kendra Antony grabbed the puck in the right circle, faked a shot to get Puputti to react, then stepped across the goal-mouth right-to-left and tucked a shot into the open goal for a 2-0 lead.
Exactly two minutes later, UMD responded for a goal, when Joanne Eustace got the puck in the left circle, curled across the slot to get free, and picked her spot, drilling her seventh goal of the season to close it to 2-1.
But if anything, MacMillan got better after giving up the goal.
“We knew what we were getting into, coming up here,” said Dan Koch, a first-year assistant coach, who formerly coached St. Mary’s before joining Trina Bourget, who went from interim to head coach this season. “They’re a tough team to defend against, because they have a lot of depth, and you can’t just stop their top line. But when Jackie is on, she’s one of the best goalies in the country, and we played really strong defense. They didn’t have a lot of second shots.”
When the Bulldogs did seem to have a chance to go for a rebound, on several occasions while the puck was obviously still in the clear referee Krista Knight blew her whistle to stop play, much to the frustration of the Bulldogs. Most of the penalties were well-deserved, but with 4:39 remaining, MacMillan deflected the puck into the left corner and Hanne Sikio swerved past MacMillan, brushing her lightly. MacMillan flopped to the ice, flat on her back, and looked like she was making a “snow angel” until Knight bought the routine and called Sikio for a penalty — Sikio’s second penalty of the entire season. MacMillan then got up and went to the bench, smiling broadly as she accepted congratulations for drawing the penalty.
“I had to do that,” she laughed, afterward. While the Badgers didn’t threaten during that power play, they spent the two minutes at least getting a respite from UMD’s ever-increasing pressure. With Puputti pulled for a six-attacker finish, Hunter stepped up to intercept and hit the empty net from the UMD blue line with 20 seconds remaining. The Badgers poured off the bench and swarmed around MacMillan — who really proved to be their snow angel.
UMD comeback fizzles as BC freshman goalie earns 5-1 victory
Boston College won the Silverado Shootout by whipping UMD 5-1 Saturday night, but it wasn’t as easy as the score indicated. The true tale was better told by the fact that Boston College freshman goaltender Matti Kaltiainen came up with a spectacular 50 saves — tying the tournament record — and earned most valuable player honors for the tournament.
It was BC’s second 5-1 triumph in two days, but the Eagles had to work a lot harder against UMD than they did while romping to the 5-1 opening victory over Miami of Ohio. Kaltiainen made 27 saves in the second period alone, as UMD came up with 93 total shot attempts in the game, 75 of them in the second and third periods, and even though many of them seemed to fly right into blocking BC bodies, both figures were season highs.
At first, however, it didn’t look like Boston College would have to work at all to breeze past UMD.
The Bulldogs were fresh from one of their most uplifting victories in Friday’s first-round game — a 3-2 victory over Yale that required a shorthanded goal by Matt Mathias with 2:51 left to tie and a goal by Junior Lessard with 4.6 seconds to go to win it — but Boston College presented a whole different problem for the Bulldogs.
Rarely have the Bulldogs looked shakier than in the first period, however, as they contributed to a 3-0 head start by the Eagles. The Bulldogs seemed hopelessly out of it, unable to simply dump the puck out of their zone at some points, and unable to dump it into the Eagle zone at others. UMD coach Scott Sandelin pulled goalie Rob Anderson after the third goal, although it would have been impossible to pull all the Bulldogs who made things pretty easy for BC.
Amazingly, UMD came storming back to make the second period as dominant a period as they’ve had this season. The Bulldogs outshot BC 28-6 in the session, but could only get one goal back, thanks to the brilliant goaltending of freshman Kaltiainen. Andy Reierson’s goal, on a two-man advantage, was hardly a proper reward next to Kaltiainen’s 27 saves.
At the start, however, the Bulldogs looked like they were paying entirely too much respect to the Eagles, the defending NCAA champs. At 4:20, Ryan Shannon intercepted UMD defenseman Mark Carlson’s breakout try and skated in alone. Anderson gambled by lunging for a poke-check, but Shannon stepped around him and popped the puck into the empty net.
Kaltiainen gave a taste of what was to come by stopping Tommy Nelson and Drew Otten on power-play chances a few minutes later, and when BC got its first power play, Ales Dolinar made it 2-0 for the Eagles at 11:00 by moving in to score another unassisted goal, with another botched UMD outlet attempt.
BC killed another penalty later in the first period, and immediately turned back to the attack, with Tony Voce capitalizing on another UMD turnover and feeding J.D. Forrest, who moved in from the point to score at 17:56.
UMD had the benefit of three power plays in the second period, with Mathias having the best chance in the early going. He was stopped by Kaltiainen one time, and then was chopped hard enough by Brett Peterson that Peterson was awarded a 5-minute major penalty at 4:06.
The Bulldogs tried to crank up the power play, and at 5:27, Voce also went off for roughing. UMD’s Tim Hambly had gone to the net and took an after-the-whistle swat at Kaltiainen. Voce took issue with the unpenalized slash, and went off for two minutes.
Finally, on the two-man power play, UMD was able to puncture Kaltiainen’s stout netminding. After a flurry of shots, Andy Reierson scored from the left point with a screened slapshot.
The 3-1 deficit didn’t look insurmountable going into the third period, after UMD’s strong second session. But midway through the final period, it got insurmountable when Voce was sprung from his own end by Jeff Giuliano’s feed and he skated into the UMD zone, beating Coole from 25 feet for a 4-1 cushion.
The Bulldogs kept firing, forcing Kaltiainen to make 16 more saves in the final period, but when Sandelin pulled Coole for a sixth attacker with over three minutes remaining, Ryan Murphy promptly zipped a 100-footer into the empty net at 17:02.
About the Author
John Gilbert is a lifetime Minnesotan and career journalist, specializing in cars and sports during and since spending 30 years at the Minneapolis Tribune, now the Star Tribune. More recently, he has continued translating the high-tech world of autos and sharing his passionate insights as a freelance writer/photographer/broadcaster. A member of the prestigious North American Car and Truck of the Year jury since 1993. John can be heard Monday-Friday from 9-11am on 610 KDAL(www.kdal610.com) on the "John Gilbert Show," and writes a column in the Duluth Reader.
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