Sports News
“It’s a five-game series for a reason,” Fleet coach Kris Sparre said. “That’s all I can say.”
OTTAWA — It looked like Aerin Frankel had the puck in her glove. Then, all of a sudden, she didn’t.
The Fleet’s all-world goaltender tried to cover a Ronja Savolainen shot that had ricocheted off the boards behind the net, but it took an unusual bounce and slid over the goal line with 28 seconds remaining, handing the Ottawa Charge a 2-1 win over the Fleet in front of a playoff record 13,112 fans.
The Fleet outshot Ottawa, 37-22, including 17-5 in the second period, and Charge forward Rebecca Leslie said her team wasn’t happy with how they played. Even so, Ottawa took a 2-1 series lead in the best-of-five Walter Cup semifinal series; Boston faces a do-or-die Game 4 when the teams return to Canadian Tire Centre at 3 p.m. Sunday.
A Fleet win sets up a winner-take-all game Tuesday night at Lowell’s Tsongas Center.
“It’s a five-game series for a reason,” Fleet coach Kris Sparre said. “That’s all I can say.”
Sparre said he’s not worried about Frankel and doesn’t plan to address the decisive goal with her.
But it’s been an unusual series for the goaltender, who entered the playoffs as an MVP frontrunner after a 1.17 goals against average and league-record eight shutouts in the regular season. In three playoff games, Frankel has conceded five goals on 60 shots — a .917 save percentage down from her .953 in the regular season.
Charge goaltender Gwyneth Philips, on the other hand, has found a higher gear. The Fleet don’t expect to beat her cleanly, particularly after a Game 2 loss in which they had 20 grade-A scoring chances and cashed in just one. It was the same story Friday night, as they generated chance after chance directly in front of the crease but struggled to pot them.
Philips, who backed up Frankel as Team USA won gold at the Milan Olympics, made one spectacular save after another early in Friday’s game as the Fleet racked up 26 shots on goal through two periods, including a diving paddle save on Rattray’s wraparound opportunity late in the middle frame.
Sparre said after Game 2 that if they played that exact game 10 times, the Fleet would come out on top in nine of them. Yet on Friday, the game presented itself in a remarkably similar manner and the Fleet still ended up with a loss.
The coach said he doesn’t want to change anything.
“Just keep running back the same game, playing hard, getting pucks into the dirty areas of the ice, and controlling the offensive zone like we’ve been doing,” he said. “Eventually you hope that it’ll wear them down, and you’re going to get those second and third goals that we’ve been waiting to see.”
For the third time in three games, the Charge scored first, leaving Boston racing to catch up.
Ottawa coach Carla McLeod said after the game there’s no secret to it beyond simply trying to get pucks on the net, but it’s an unusual pattern for the Fleet, who scored first in a league-leading 23 of their 30 regular-season games.
As a penalty against Jamie Lee Rattray expired in the first period, Ottawa retained possession in the offensive zone, and Fanuza Kadirova fired a wrist shot past Frankel at 13:33.
“It’s never fun playing from behind,” Sparre said. “We’ve got to find a way to put that thing over the line so we’re not in these one-goal games.”
In the long six-day break since Game 2, the Fleet worked on obstructing Philips’s view, winning the net-front battle, and crashing the net for second-chance opportunities. The latter is how Schepers tied the game.
Shay Maloney fired on Philips, who made a pad save, but Schepers flew in to clean up the rebound 5:11 into the second period.
Schepers is no stranger to scoring in the playoffs, having scored the deciding goal for Minnesota that won each of the first two Walter Cups. Friday’s tally 5:11 into the second period marked her first point of this year’s playoffs, and the assist was Maloney’s first career playoff point.
“My role is to continue to reassure the girls that we’re doing the right things,” Schepers said. “We can’t do much else aside from [putting] a couple more pucks in the net here.”