March 4, 2015

Tiger Women’s Hockey Falls in ECACH Playoffs But Proud of Resilience Displayed Over the Winter

HEMMED IN: Princeton University women’s hockey player Emily Achterkirch, center, gets bottled up as she goes after the puck in recent action. Last weekend, freshman defenseman Achterkirch and the sixth-seeded Tigers had trouble getting untracked as they got swept at third-seeded Quinnipiac in a best-of-three ECAC Hockey quarterfinal series, falling 7-0 on Friday and 2-0 a day later. The defeats left Princeton with a final record of 15-14-2.(Photo by Frank Wojciechowski)

HEMMED IN: Princeton University women’s hockey player Emily Achterkirch, center, gets bottled up as she goes after the puck in recent action. Last weekend, freshman defenseman Achterkirch and the sixth-seeded Tigers had trouble getting untracked as they got swept at third-seeded Quinnipiac in a best-of-three ECAC Hockey quarterfinal series, falling 7-0 on Friday and 2-0 a day later. The defeats left Princeton with a final record of 15-14-2. (Photo by Frank Wojciechowski)

It didn’t take long this season for Jeff Kampersal to realize that his Princeton University women’s hockey team possessed a reservoir of character.

“We do battle, this is a resilient group, an early sign was the RIT game in November where we were down 3-0 and won 4-3 in overtime,” said Kampersal.

“We had two or three wins in OT early and then we had a tough part of the schedule and played hard. I knew then that this group would battle.”

The Tigers proved that they battle the nation’s top teams on even terms, falling 2-1 to No. 2 Minnesota, losing 3-2 to No. 5 and defending national champion Clarkson, and falling 4-2 to top-ranked Boston College. Along the way they picked up some impressive scalps, edging No. 4 Harvard 1-0 and posting a pair of victories over a top-10 Cornell squad.

Kampersal was expecting more of the same last weekend when sixth-seeded Princeton played at third-seeded and No. 6 Quinnipiac in a best-of-three ECAC Hockey quarterfinal series.

But coming out flat, Princeton suffered its most lopsided defeat of the year, giving up four first period goals on the way to a 7-0 setback.

“We prepared the same way, the kids were fired up,” said Kampersal. “I thought we played well in the first five minutes but the first goal deflated us. The defense wasn’t coming out hard enough, it was unfortunate and then the flood gates opened up. It seemed like every shot they were taking was going in. Kim (Newell) battled in goal but we didn’t give her much help.”

A day later, Princeton produced its usual hard effort but it wasn’t enough as Quinnipiac prevailed 2-0, scoring on a power play goal in the second and an empty net goal in the waning moments of regulation.

“The message after Friday’s game was to come back the next day and play with pride,” said Kampersal, whose team ended the winter with an overall record of 15-14-2.

“We did bounce back, we were more aggressive in the d-zone. They scored on a power play so we were even in 5-on-5.

Kampersal acknowledged that Quinnipiac provides a lot of problems for the
Tigers.

“The matchup with Quinnipiac is not good for us,” said Kampersal. “We don’t get a lot of shots and they are good at limiting shots. They suffocate us offensively, that happened during the regular season. The system they play is really solid and structured. You have to play simple, throw pucks off the boards. You have to be really patient. Everything has to be be perfect for us to beat Quinnipiac and that is hard to ask.”

In the finale, junior goalie Newell was nearly perfect, stopping 34 of the 35 shots she faced.

“Newell has had a great year; she wants to win every day,” said Kampersal. “In the big games that we won this year, she was our best player.”

While the final weekend stung, Kampersal was proud of how his team came up big throughout the winter, highlighted by a late surge in the Ivy League title race that saw Princeton go 7-2-1 to finish just behind Harvard (8-2) in the Ivy standings.

“I am happy with the season overall,” said Kampersal. “If you had told me before the season that we would have had a chance to win the Ivy title in the last weekend, I would have taken that. To beat Cornell twice was great, we haven’t done that in a while and to beat Harvard at home was great. If we had made some little plays in the Dartmouth game we could have won and it would not have come down to the last weekend. Yale caught fire down the stretch. We played hard against them and gave everything we had. It was a great run no question to get us in position for a chance at a title.”

The team’s four seniors, Brianna Leahy, Brianne Mahoney, Ali Pankowski, and Ashley Holt, had a great run.

“I haven’t said goodbye to them at this point,” said Kampersal. “It was a good group, they gave us a lot, and I will miss them.”

Princeton has a lot of talent coming back so the future looks good. The Tigers return its top five scorers, sophomore Molly Contini (16 goals and 12 assists in 2014-15), sophomore Kelsey Koelzer (8 goals, 18 assists), junior Jaimie McDonell (11 goals, 14 assists), sophomore Hilary Lloyd (6 goals, 15 assists), and freshman Kiersten Falck (2 goals, 13 assists) along with star goalie Newell (2.36 goals against average, .925 save percentage). “Hopefully they keep working hard and have a great summer,” said Kampersal.

“The top line (Contini, Lloyd, and McDonell) played well and we have a good supporting cast. We like the freshmen who we have coming in. It will be good competition within the group.”

With some focused offseason work, the Tigers should be even more competitive than they were this winter.

“Individually, they all need to get better,” added Kampersal. “Some need to get in better shape, some need to work on hockey skills, some need to work on hockey smarts, which is tough to do in the summer. We need to break it down and analyze each player and figure out one or two things they can work on to be better. If they do that, it will help the whole team.”