Women’s Recap: Boston collapses before the finish line, drops 3-0 to Minnesota.

The first period saw an electric start with an electric crowd and the two seemed to feed off of each other. Tsongas was showing itself sold out with SRO as a testy atmosphere for women’s hockey. The early going saw very few whistles and plenty of opportunities on each side of the ice. While there was a matching minor called a lot of physicality was let go and the period ended without a score.

The second period saw a very long review early for a possible major to Kaleigh Fratkin but eventually it was deemed there was no penalty on the play. Around the middle of the period Minnesota was able to have a sustained possession that led to a Sydney Brodt shot that was able to get by Frankel after Liz Schepers tapped it in. After the goal play noticeably slowed down a bit and Boston continued to struggle to generate much offense. Boston gave up 16 shots in the period and only tallied 14 through both periods. There were a few opportunities where Boston fumbled the puck and never led to dangerous chances.

The third started with more of the same for Boston as they had trouble breaking out of the zone and maintaining possession. The only thing in the early going getting the crowd into it were some spectacular Frankel saves. Boston would give up a possession so long Minnesota had done a full rolling change before Michela Cava snuck one past Frankel. Less than a minute later Boston would commit a penalty, still not having a shot in the final frame, while trailing. Boston would pull Frankel with just under five minutes remaining but took over two minutes to register their first shot with the extra skater. Minnesota’s Kendall Coyne would register the next shot and put Boston away for good, as the crowd started to empty slightly with just over two minutes remaining.

Game Notes

• In a crushing return to normalcy Minnesota obliterated Boston in shots. Minnesota put up more shots in the second period alone then Boston had in both the first two periods, and the third period was somehow worse as Boston did not tally a shot until very late despite trailing by multiple goals. The final frame saw Minnesota put up 19 shots to Boston’s 3.
• The crowd was cheering the name of our Green Monster despite the loss as an obvious reminder that this one was not on the goaltending for Boston. Hensley was barely tested but stopped all 17 shots Boston put on her.
• Lowell made up for a quiet season with some raucous noise to start the game and whenever Frankel made a great save, but they were left with little else to cheer for as Boston ran out of gas. Even late the crowd did try to cajole them back in the game but Boston clearly had nothing left to give.
• Tonight featured only one skater advantage penalty as Fratkin was called for tripping but Boston’s PK held strong to prevent any PP goals in the series.
• Boston seemingly ran out of gas as after the first period next to nothing was done in the Minnesota end of the ice for the remainder of the game.
• After an offensive outburst in game one of the season the Boston sticks went quiet, only registering 2 goals in the final 4 games of the series, being shutout twice.
• While we don’t know if they will do a breakdown like the NHL does, it is certain there are a lot of injuries that played a role in the outcome that we saw in the latter parts of this series.