Sunday, March 10, 2019

Syracuse Wins Its First Ever CHA Tournament Championship

They say every sports story is a story about overcoming adversity.

It was certainly the case on Friday when the #3 seed Syracuse defeated #1 seed RMU 6-2 to win its first ever CHA Tournament, and first ever bid to the NCAA Tournament.

It's not that Robert Morris was so much more favored than Syracuse to win, it's not that Robert Morris is that much better on paper or ice than Syracuse. But with six previous conference championship appearances and no wins, among other conference storylines, this wasn't the year many CHA fans picked Syracuse to win the tournament. For Syracuse fans, it probably makes their win that much sweeter.

The Orange finished the year third in the CHA, they had zero non conference wins and their record is currently 13-21-3. Currently ranked at 28th in the pairwise, they will be huge underdogs when they venture west next week to play one of Minnesota or Wisconsin in the NCAA Tournament. There is no doubt the regular season did not go the Orange's way, and looking back there are things they wish would have been different.

Despite that, they are also CHA Conference Tournament Champions for the first time in program history, and one only has to look a Syracuse's twiter feed to get a sense of what that means to the people involved:


Early on in the season, it didn't seem likely the Orange would get to this point. Forget the 6 previous championship games, and a supposedly rising Penn State program for a moment. Consider the Orange's first game agaisnst RIT on November 16th. This group of Syracuse seniors had never lost to RIT, and entering the third period of the game Syracuse held a comfortable 4-2 lead. There was a play in the neutral zone where the RIT player dumped the puck from near the red line on net. You know how it goes - goalie bobbles the puck, thinks she has it, defenders stop skating, hungry forward keeps skating, whistle doesn't blow, and the world's easiest goal gets tapped into the net. The demise of the game continued from there, and RIT ended up not only winning 6-4, but winning the next game versus Syracuse as well.

On January 18th, Syracuse hosted first place Robert Morris. By now the Orange's record was 4-16-1 overall, and they were riding a 10 game losing streak. I tuned in to the end of game as it was tied late. What did I see, but the referees waving off a late goal scored by Syracuse that would have given them a much needed win. It's like they were cursed. There was no quit in the Orange though, and they made it to overtime and prevailed on a goal by Lindsay Eastwood.

With the overtime win, the tide turned a little bit on the Syracuse season. They suffered three more losses to Robert Morris in the regular season, and another loss and tie to  RIT, but also beat Mercyhurst twice, took 3 out of 4 points from Penn State, and swept Lindenwood, primarily alternating their goalies throughout. Going into the tournament, they could say to themselves, "look we've beaten every team in the league except RIT this year (and we tied them), so why not us to win the tournament?"

The tournament game I watched them play was of course the semi versus Mercyhurst. Mercyhurst played well, outshooting the Orange, scoring two power play goals, asserting themselves in the last minute of the opening period to score another. The main quibble I have with Mercyhurst's play is that twice they gave up a goal only a minute or so after scoring themselves. (That lack of consistency, that inability to lock down a moment is something the Lakers fought all year, but that is not the point of this post). The point is that after dispatching Lindenwood in the first game of the playoffs, Syracuse played excellent to beat the rested Lakers in the closest game of the tournament, and then soundly beat RMU in the final.

I can't speak to the beat down that happened in the final, but in the semi (it pains me to write this) Syracuse did everything right.

They got the first goal, a rebound after an odd person rush. The goal scorer was defender Lindsay Eastwood who made sure to high tail it down the ice to bang in any rebound. Twice when Mercyhurst scored, Cuse answered right after. Sickeningly (to me), Syracuse scored two of their goals on delayed penalties, both completely opportunistic plays that happened shortly after the linesman's arm went in the air - one a drop pass to Eastwood who sniped from the point in transition, another finding Anonda Hoppner on a breakaway as she was freed from the penalty box. In college, the penalty still needs to be served in that scenario, and so the Lakers lost 4 precious minutes of potential offense to killing a penalty for which the had already essentially paid a price. And the nail in the coffin, the late third period power play go ahead goal by defender Lindsay Eastwood. It was a career game for the junior, her first ever college hat trick.

If I put away my Laker fandom for a moment, and indulge myself merely as someone who loves sport and seeing people overcome adversity in the pursuit of success, the most impactful moment of the event was seeing a program win something for the first time.

In doing so, they expanded the blueprint of places a young hockey player can aspire to play at that have tasted success. Lack of parity is often a criticism of women's sport, and women's sport fandom is weird in that you don't just cheer for your team, you cheer for growth, parity, visibility, and opportunity, as well. The Orange win represented many of those things, and it didn't come easy. It was an 11 year battle, led by an accomplished coach with previous NCAA success to get to this point:


There are very few active Division I coaches who have started a program from scratch, and still coach the program today. Without researching it, I would estimate the list is Mike Sisti, Paul Flanagan, Erin Hamlen (Merrimack), and maybe Peter Van Buskirk (Holy Cross). Of that list, only Sisti and Flanagan have led their programs to an NCAA berth  at the DI level, and that Flanagan has done it two different programs is a tremendous accomplishment. Thanks to a fellow USCHO poster, I was reminded that another coach who has led two programs to an NCAA Tournament is Maura Crowell, who did so as interim head coach at Harvard in 2014, and then subsequently as head coach at UMD.

Lastly, the Syracuse conference tournament win does not just speak to expanding parity, et al, but there is something to be gleaned from the roster that did it. In an early season write up about the Orange, I lamented their loss of former U18 Canada goalie Edith D'Astous Moreau, and I wrote about how goaltending would be a question mark for the Orange. The regular season goaltending wasn't great, to be honest, but come tournament time, it was the Orange with the best goalie. Their goalie in the semi and final was Ady Cohen, a junior goalie not from Canada, Minnesota or Massachusetts. No she hails from Boynton Beach, Florida, reminding me once again the face of hockey is changing. And she didn't play her high school hockey at Shattuck St. Mary's or an east coast prep school. Rather, she played at the only prep school in Ohio, Gilmour Academy, based out of a Cleveland suburb. Cohen was named to the all tournament team, for her efforts. In the semi and final she stopped 55 of the 60 shots thrown her way for a .917 save percentage.Senior goalie Maddi Welch played the first game, vs Lindenwood.

While the next logical points of discussion are to consider what the Orange will do to prepare for the monumental task that faces them next week, or to surmise about what the conference tournament win might mean for the landscape of the CHA next year, I think the best thing to say is simply congrats, Orange:





To read more about their win check out:
Title IX hockey:  https://titleixhockey.wordpress.com/2019/03/09/what-on-earth-just-happened/
CHA Women's Hockey website: http://www.chawomenshockey.com/news/2019/3/8/womens-ice-hockey-championship-game-recap.aspx

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