ERIE, Pa.– Women’s Hockey Head Coach Logan Bittle and his team have been preparing for the playoffs since the beginning of the season, regardless of this year being the program’s first year back.
With that mindset, the Colonials dominated Mercyhurst in Game 1 of the best-of-three series Friday afternoon 5-0, with four of the five goals coming in the third period.
“In the second semester, we’ve really kind of tried to fine-tune some stuff and [today] was a really great effort. We’re gonna enjoy this one for sure, but the fact of the matter is, though, we’re only halfway done. We got business to take care of tomorrow.”
Five different goalscorers got on the scoresheet, including freshman Laura Eustace, who scored the first goal of her career.
“I think if you can have scoring up and down your lineup, that’s going to help a lot,” Bittle said. “We’ve been fortunate here the last few weekends that we’ve gotten that. So, I’m really, really happy with the effort. ”
The Colonials’ first goal in the second period was from a Shailynn Snow shot after the shots were even 10-10 in the scoreless first frame.
32 seconds into the third period, Courtney Hall found former Mercyhurst Laker Jersey Phillips in the front of the net. Phillips went bar-down to score on her former team and increase the Colonials’ lead to two goals.
Towards the latter part of the game, All-Conference and All-Rookie member Alaina Giampietro added to the goal-friendly period.
“I think one of the things is when you get a lead, sometimes it’s easy to sit back,” Bittle said. “We didn’t want to sit back. We wanted to kind of keep things going and kudos and credit to the girls. They did a great job in that period.”
Goaltender Maggie Hatch had 36 saves in the win. The redshirt freshman notched her first shutout of the season.
“She’s been great all year,” Bittle said. “She just showed it again. She’s a gamer and she has kept us in a lot of games we shouldn’t have been in this year, but she was great today.”
The Colonials will look to advance with a win tomorrow at the Mercyhurst Ice Arena at 2 p.m. Saturday.
“Obviously, Mercyhurst is a great team and we expect their best tomorrow,” Bittle said. “We got to match and exceed their energy and their compete level. If we can do that, I like our chances, but it’s playoff hockey. Anything can happen.”
