Diana Draayer (4) celebrates her short-handed goal with Kaitlyn Klein. (photo courtesy of Ryan Coleman, d3photography.com)
ST. PAUL, Minn. – For the sixth time this season the Gustavus women’s hockey team shut out its opponent, this time skating to a 3-0 win at St. Catherine on Friday night. All three goals were of a different variety as the No. 6-ranked Gusties scored on a power play, short-handed, and on an empty net to improve to 14-2-4 overall and 7-2-3 in the MIAC.
Allie Stanger (Jr., Paynesville, Minn.) scored what proved to be the game-winning goal at the 16:29 mark of the first period on a power play. Katy Fuller (Sr., Minneapolis, Minn.) and Kristen Cash (So., Roseville, Minn.) assisted on the goal. Neither team could find the back of the net in the middle frame, but midway through the third, Diana Draayer (Sr., Deephaven, Minn.) scored her second short-handed goal of the season, and 13th overall, to put the visitors up 2-0 with 11:05 on the clock. Kaitlyn Klein (Sr., Plymouth, Minn.) assisted on the goal. And with 1:14 remaining in the game, Klein took advantage of an empty net to score her team-leading 18th goal of the season.
Gustavus outshot the Wildcats 47-12 as Amanda DiNella (Jr., Oakbrook Terrace, Ill.) stopped all 12 shots for her fourth shutout of the season. The Gusties stopped all four power play opportunities by St. Kate’s but went just 1-for-6 when they held the skater advantage.
“We had a lot of opportunities in the first period, but just couldn’t capitalize on a number of them,” Head Coach Mike Carroll said. “For some reason, right now we’re just not clicking on the power play, but we’ll figure it out. There were a lot of penalties and the flow of the game got messed up, but we did some really good things and hung on. Our Friday nights haven’t been the best lately but we battled through that as well. All in all, it was a pretty good effort on our part.”
The two teams wrap up the series at 2 p.m. tomorrow in St. Peter.