Women’s Hockey: Davis Finds her Scoring Touch
By: Max Wolpoff
The last goal freshman Sammy Davis scored came in the first period against Boston College on Noverber 7th. This is after she earned Hockey East Rookie of the Month honors with seven goals in October to begin her collegiate career. In the 12 games since, she scored no goals and six assists.
With Sunday’s matinee at Gutterson Field House, her offensive prowess resembled her play from October as she scored three goals to lead Boston University to a 6-2 victory over Vermont. BU improved to a 14-8-2 (11-4-2 Hockey East) record in the process of dropping Vermont to a 6-17-2 (4-9-2 Hockey East) mark.
At 2:10 of the first period Lillian Ribeirinha-Braga found Davis in the neutral zone skating up-ice. By 2:16, Davis’s backhand shot slipped underneath UVM goaltender Molly Depew’s pads for the early 1-0 lead. 12 minutes later, Samantha Sutherland sent the biscuit Davis’s way behind the Catamount net. She skated around until a little space opened up for her between the left faceoff circle and the goal line. A quick wrist shot was all it took to double the Terrier advantage.
After the teams changed ends for the second, BU’s fortune did not change. Davis inadvertently blocked Alexis Woloschuck’s shot in front of Depew before everyone within a 20-foot radius tried to pounce on the loose puck. Samatha Sutherland, already with assists on both of Davis’s goals, escaped the pile-up with the puck to add her sixth of the year to the scoreboard.
Cassidy Campeau, whose goal stood up to a short video review, and Kourtney Menches put their first of the year past BU netminder Victoria Hanson to cut the Terrier lead to just one entering the final 20 minutes of play. Hanson, in her first game since November 28th against Cornell, defended the net for the Terriers and looked to return to form in her 23 save performance, stopping all six Catamount shots in the first and all five in the third; Rebecca Leslie took back the team points lead with an assist on the goal.
Within a 26 second span in the third period, the Terriers ended whatever hope Vermont had at another comeback. Alexis Crossley added her second of the season and Davis completed her first collegiate hat trick, once again with an assist from Sutherland, to just about finish off Vermont. Dakota Woodworth put in her fifth of the year to round off the scoring at 6-2.
With Davis’s second goal, the Terriers can now boast that at least one freshman in each of the last eight seasons has scored a minimum of 10 goals. Sutherland’s four-point game (one goal, three assists) accounts for half the points she’s scored in her four-game point streak. 10 different skaters tallied a point in the afternoon contest.
In potentially the final out-of-conference matchup this season, BU will travel to Hamden, CT for a match with ECAC’s No. 4/4 Quinnipiac. The Bobcats just set their program-record unbeaten streak at 17 games with a weekend sweep of Robert Morris. Their last loss came against Yale on Halloween; they are 14-0-3 since, including a current four-game win streak.