Sign in Subscribe
PHF

Behind the Glass: Bach goes off against the Blades

Bach notches her first CWHL hat trick, Jillian Dempsey can’t be stopped at even strength, and the SDHL regular season ends with Luleå on top

It’s time for another installment of Behind the Glass — the Ice Garden’s weekly column collecting stories, stats, trends, and observations from the world of professional women’s hockey.

  • Shenae Lundberg tended goal for the Connecticut Whale on Saturday night after signing a PTO. In her first NWHL action since March 12, 2017, Lundberg stopped 22 of the 25 shots she faced in Connecticut’s 3–1 loss to the Boston Pride.
  • With her goal against the Whale on Saturday, Jillian Dempsey now has a league-leading nine even strength goals this year. Alexa Gruschow and Madison Packer led the league with seven even strength goals last season — Dempsey was not far behind, with six goals at evens./
  • Connecticut has now failed to score a goal on 14 consecutive power play opportunities. Emily Fluke scored the last Whale goal on the power play on Jan. 6 against the Riveters. She and Katerina Mrázová are the only Whale players with power play goals this season.
  • Gigi Marvin has one point — a primary assist — in her last five games. She had nine points in her first six games this season. It’s worth noting that she suffered a shoulder injury against the Riveters on Dec. 9.
  • Taylor Accursi snapped her seven-game goal-scoring drought when she potted a goal against Katie Fitzgerald on Saturday afternoon. She’s now up two goals and an assist in 10 games this season. Accursi had five goals in her first three games in the NWHL last season with the Beauts, but scored just one goal in her next 12 games.
  • Rebecca Morse and Kristin Lewicki both scored their first goals of the 2018–19 season against Nicole Hensley on Saturday. Lewicki’s goal was also her first as a Riveter. She scored five goals last season with the Buffalo Beauts as a rookie.
  • Victoria Bach recorded her first pro hat trick on Feb. 3 against the Worcester Blades. Bach notched eight points in Markham’s two-game series against Worcester. She now has points in her last nine games, with 21 total points in that window.
  • In a recent interview with Erica Ayala (Victory Press), CWHL All-Star Liz Knox offered some valuable insight on a wide range of topics, including some of the anxiety by fans on social media about #OneLeague./

“I think the thing people fear is that somebody is going to come in and turn this into something that it hasn’t been. Or turn this into something that it’s not. At the end of the day, it just won’t happen because the players will not play for something that they don’t believe in,” she said.

  • Jamie Lee Rattray has had multi-point performances in four of her last five games. Prior to this recent outburst of production, Rattray played 18 games this season before picking up more than one point in a game. She had 11 multi-point games last year for the Thunder and never played more than six games without picking up two points in a contest./
  • Jordan Anderson broke through with a two-goal game for the Blades on Sunday night after picking up just one assist in her first 18 games of the 2018–19 season. Anderson is one of five skaters on the Blades north of 5-foot-8.
  • CWHL interim commissioner Jayna Hefford spoke with Emily Kaplan and Greg Wyshynski of ESPN in a wide-ranging Q&A on Feb. 6. Naturally, the subject of #OneLeague and the potential involvement of Gary Bettman and the NHL came up./

It’s a combination of all those things. We’ve had ongoing conversations and the one thing I can say about Gary is, everything he’s said publicly is what he’s said privately. So that’s where they stand. They don’t really want to get involved as long as there are two leagues that exist. So it’s a challenging situation. Especially being an athlete, that level of patience is really challenging. We want everything to happen faster. But I think their interest in the game is a positive thing. We see that as an end goal. And it’s like, how do we close that gap and make it happen as soon as possible?

  • Marie-Philip Poulin had back-to-back two-goal games against the Calgary Inferno last weekend. It was the second time this season Poulin has scored two (or more) goals in back-to-back games. Les Canadiennes’ superstar forward has five goals and six assists in her last three games after she was kept out of the box score on Jan. 26 against the Markham Thunder.
  • Les Canadiennes de Montréal have the best record in the league in the last 10 games. They’ve gone 7–2–0–1 in the last 10 games and are now just two points behind the Calgary Inferno in the standings.
  • With the SDHL regular season over, the two suspensions handed out by the league on Feb. 4 will carry over to the 2019 Playoffs./
  • MODO’s Michela Cava won the SDHL’s scoring title by just a single point with 64 points in 36 games. Jenni Hiirikoski was the runner up with 19 goals and 44 assists in two fewer games than Cava. Hiirikoski led the league in assists and shots on goal with an average of 8.02 SOG/GP.
  • Luleå HF/MSSK scored the first goal of the game in 33 of their 36 games this season. They averaged a staggering 43.6 shots per game, while allowing an average of 20.52 shots against per game. They also scored nine shorthanded goals this season and allowed only 10 power play goals against.
  • The ZhHL playoff race is heating up in the final month of the regular season. SKIF Nizhny Novgorod trails HK Tornado by three points and they have three games in hand. SKIF also trails Biryusa Krasnoyarsk, who currently sit in third place in the standings, by just five points.
  • HK Tornado’s Alevtina Shtaryova has points in her last five games, with 11 total points in that span. The 21-year-old has 55 points in 33 games this season, which is a new high-water mark for her ZhHL career./

Behind the Glass: Speed and Skill

Read next

Comments ()