Erin Deters spent the whole game on Bemidji State’s bench Friday night as she watched her fellow goalie Brittni Mowat hold Syracuse to only one goal. Deters did her one better on Saturday.

Deters stopped all 28 shots she faced. Everything from slap shots from the point to quick cross-crease jams. Deters looked every bit the part of a star as Bemidji State (2-0) cruised to a 3-0 victory and a weekend sweep over Syracuse (0-2) on Saturday afternoon at Tennity Ice Pavilion.

From start to finish, Syracuse struggled to generate scoring chances, even on the powerplay, as it went 0-for-6 on Saturday. The Orange are now 1-10 on the advantage this season.

“I really look at the chances we manufactured. Whether we scored or not is one thing but I think were too hesitant,” Syracuse head coach Paul Flanagan said. “I was telling the team we’re almost trying to be too precise and I think when you get that way and you’re trying to be so fine-tuned and you look for that perfect goal it becomes a mindset and you start forcing passes.”

Flanagan and players both admitted that SU became too fancy at times. For long stretches of the game it seemed the Orange kept on passing and passing, often letting shot opportunities go by. Then players got too precise. Stick-handling too much and passing up on shots to carry the puck and look for a more open shooter, never really testing Deters.

Even when Syracuse did manage to get decent opportunities, shots either missed the frame, or Deters stonewalled them.

The Orange’s best opportunity came when Stephanie Grossi skated in behind the rush in the second period to find the puck on her stick in a shooting lane. She missed wide.

“I think that just comes back to practice and skill sessions, working on ‘sniping’ or getting it into those little corners,” Grossi said. “If we can do that on a goalie it won’t matter how good the goalie is.”

On a weekend where Syracuse was outscored 5-1, the Orange’s offense lacked flow. After 14 penalties on Friday night, there were an additional 19 called on Saturday which limited either side from getting into a rhythm. Flanagan said his team may have been hurt by “overthinking” as well as the Beaver’s persistent physical play.

After this weekend, SU is off for two weeks until hitting the road to take on Northeastern, giving Flanagan and the players some much needed time to work and improve.

“We can maybe just take a step back and get back to fundamentals and start relying on instincts and keeping the game simple.” Flanagan said. “Maybe we can just relax, we need to do some conditioning, and we can really spend some time on conditioning.”

All the time spent on special teams, both power play and penalty kill, as well as combatting Bemidji State’s feisty style had Syracuse off its game all weekend.

Moving forward the Orange’s emphasis is to play tougher and put more pucks on net to try and generate chances. Savannah Rennie was frustrated by being shutout by Deters, but said some of the blame lies within the SU offense.

“The biggest thing is to get traffic in the net,” Rennie said. “The less she can see, the less she can stop. Put pucks on net, get traffic and we’ll be golden.”

Published on October 1, 2016 at 8:14 pm

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