Video Highlights by Tanner Acebo, NU Sports Information
NORTHFIELD, Vt. – Freshman Erin Joyce (Manchester, N.H.) continued her flare for the dramatic late game heroics, scoring the game-winning goal with 3:17 left in the third period to lift the Norwich University women's ice hockey team to a 4-3 victory over Amherst College on Friday night at Kreitzberg Arena.
In a battle between two top-six ranked teams in the latest d3hockey.com poll, Norwich emerged victorious in a thrilling back-and-forth affair with the Lord Jeffs for its seventh straight win.
Norwich (7-1-1, 6-0-0 ECAC East) got two goals from Sarah Schwenzfeier (Hingham, Mass.) and one from Joyce and Taylor Cross (Saugus, Mass.) en route to its sixth straight win over Amherst (5-1-0, 4-0-0 NESCAC).
Norwich took one-goal leads three different times in the game only to have Amherst come back and tie the game later on. Joyce finally broke the cycle late in the third with her sixth goal of the season, flipping a wrist shot through a screen at the bottom of the left faceoff circle to put the Cadets up one last time. Schwenzfeier and Kaycie Anderson (Maple Plain, Minn.) each picked up assists on the goal.
After a scoreless first period where Amherst outshot Norwich 7-4 and outplayed the Cadets for a decent portion of the period, Schwenzfeier provided the offensive jolt, slamming the puck in on the doorstep off a pass from Anderson for a power play goal.
Amherst answered less than 1:30 later when Caitlin Ryan scored on the power play with a wrist shot from the blue line that NU sophomore goalie Celeste Robert (Rouyn Noranda, Quebec) never saw. Emily Flom picked up the assist after dropping the puck back to Ryan from the left half boards.
Norwich regained the lead when Schwenzfeier notched her second of the night on a breakaway for her fourth goal of the season. Schwenzfeier stole the puck off the stick of an Amherst player and broke out of the NU zone with a burst of speed that no one could match. She skated in on Amherst goalie Yuna Evans, deked once to the backhand before crossing back over to her forehand and tucking the puck just inside the right post before Evans could get her outstretched pad to it.
Norwich carried the 2-1 lead into the second intermission despite getting outshot again, 7-6 by the Lord Jeffs.
However, Amherst needed just 44 seconds to knot the game back up at 2-2 in the second period when Brenna Sullivan finally shoveled a puck over the goal line after an initial shot squeezed through Robert's pads and was laying in the crease. Sullivan was first to the puck to jam it in despite a mad scramble of bodies that ended up forcing the net off its pegs in the process.
Norwich answered just over a minute later when Cross fired a wrist shot past Evans from the bottom of the right faceoff circle with an assist from freshman forward Heidi Amato (Theresa, N.Y.).
Amherst kept plugging away though and found the equalizer again on the power play, this time coming from Madeline Tank after she slipped the puck into an open net after an initial shot from the blue line from Ryan hit the inside of the right post and was lying doormat in the crease. Flom also picked up the second assist on the goal for her second point of the night.
Amherst pulled Evans for the final 26 seconds in search of one more equalizer. The Lord Jeffs got three pretty good looks at the net too with Erin Martin having a shot saved by Robert and Tori Salmon just sailing a shot high of the cross bar.
Robert made 19 saves for Norwich to improve to 5-0-1 on the year. Evans made 14 saves to drop to 3-1 on the season.
Norwich looks to close out the first semester going for its eighth straight win on Sunday when the Cadets travel to Bowdoin for a 5 p.m. faceoff with the Polar Bears at Sid Watson Arena.
-CADETS-
