A Bright Spot in a Challenging Season: New York’s Victory Secures 1st Pick in Draft

It hasn’t been the inaugural season in the PWHL that New York wanted, already eliminated from playoff contention and the team playing in its their third arena of the season were able to give its fans at the Prudential Center in Newark, NJ something to cheer about with a rare comeback victory.

After a tough and stressful first period, New York would come out of the gates flying in the middle period, scoring four unanswered goals and were able to hold onto a surprising upset victory over Ottawa, who’s battling with Boston for the last playoff spot. New York earned the team’s first victory since March 25th, before the IIHF World Championship break.

A Bad Start for New York in New Jersey

If you could close your eyes and think of the worst way to start a game in hockey, you would probably say how New York opened the game at the Rock. Just over five minutes into the game Ottawa would get the opening goal from Akane Shiga. Catching New York on a change, Ottawa entered the offensive zone with a three on two. Skating down past the left circle, Savannah Harmon threw a puck towards the front of the net for Shiga to tap in to put Ottawa ahead 1-0 early.

Ottawa would double their lead nine minutes later off a wonderful snipe from Hayley Scamurra beating NY goalie Corinne Schroeder high glove from the right circle. All the momentum was on the side of Ottawa in the first period as they were looking for a third goal, but Schroeder was standing on her head to keep this game from getting out New York’s reach with 40 minutes left in the game.

The horn sounded after 20 minutes and thanks to Schroeder, New York was able to get into the locker room only down two.

“I’ve always thought Schrod’s is a very strong player mentally”, coach Draper said of his #1 goalie Corinne Schroeder post-game. “It speaks to her mental fortitude to battle through that tough first period and she made some outstanding saves as the game continued.” 

Your Typical “Tale of Two Periods”

With New York already locking up last place in the first year of the PWHL, there wasn’t much to fight for after the team went into the first intermission down two, but coach Howie Draper said the message in the locker room heading out for the second period was, “play with a sense of pride”.

The team needed to come out with a spark to begin the period and they did just that. New York started gaining more and more offensive zone time, with shots starting to reach Ottawa goalie Emerance Maschmeyer.

With that pressure, New York would finally get on the board after Brooke Hobson forced a turnover at her own blue line and found Jade Downie-Landry skating in behind the defense for a two-on-one. With the one defender over committing towards her, JDL toe-dragged past her and fired a shot low blocker, just over Maschmeyer’s pad and would trickle in for New York’s first goal of the game.

New York didn’t settle down after the goal, they picked up the pace. Less than two minutes later New York would equalize after superstar forward Alex Carpenter sprung Ella Shelton on a mini breakaway. Shelton, a defenseman by trade, tallied her sixth goal of the season as she sniped one past Maschmeyer to send the crowd at the Rock into a frenzy.

Pucks on net!

It’s an old cliché but you can’t win games, let alone score goals,without getting pucks on net. After the first period New York had just seven shots on net. Now tied at two, midway through the game, New York smelled blood in the water.

Seconds after Johanna Fällman rang the post, Shelton threw the puck on net where Maschmeyer would fumble the puck and Kayla Vespa pounced onto the rebound to collect her second goal of the season to give New York their first lead of the game after three goals in a span of 4:54.

Things would get even better for New York as they would double their lead with just under five minutes left in the second with Elizabeth Giguère finding the back of the net. Once again with the pressure building in the Ottawa defensive zone, Shelton threw a puck into the net front scrum with Giguere battling in front. Finding the puck in her feet, Giguere had her original backhand saved by Maschmeyer before batting the rebound into the net for the 4-2 lead. 

After seven shots in the first, New York finished the second with almost double the shots they had in period one, getting 13 shots on net.

Post-game, Downie-Landry talked about the mind set of getting puck towards the net and grinding in the greasy areas.

“Yeah, I mean the reality is we can’t score any goals if we’re not getting pucks and bodies to the net. It’s so important you know to get the pucks through but also to have people there you know taking the eyes of the goalie away and so that’s definitely been a focus for us these past games and for today as well especially in the second period and I think it just paid off for us”.

Closing the game out

In the third period, New York was able to lock things down defensively. Keeping scoring chances to a minimum, Ottawa was able to cut their deficit to just one with just 59 seconds left but a penalty just seconds later killed the game. New York was able to cling to a 4-3 victory, their first victory in over a month. 

The victory also saw New York clinch the #1 overall pick in the upcoming draft thanks to the leagues “Gold Plan”. The format that the league came up with to decide the first overall selection incentivizes teams to win games following playoff elimination.With New York needing just one point in their last two games, their victory against Ottawa sealed the deal.

With just one game left on their schedule against Minnesota, New York looks to take this momentum they have gained in Newark and finish the season off strong Saturday May 4th at UBS Arena with a two-game winning streak before heading into their summer break.