Courtesy Amherst Sports Information

Box Score

AMHERST, Mass. – The top-seeded Amherst College women’s ice hockey team played host to No. 2 Trinity this afternoon at Orr Rink in the 2010 NESCAC Championship title game. Trinity scored the opening goal of the game in the first period, but Amherst forced overtime and took home the program’s third NESCAC crown 2-1 on Courtney Hanlon’s (Fullerton, Calif.) game-winner in the extra session.

After rallying from a two-goal deficit to top Bowdoin 3-2 in overtime yesterday, Amherst earned a spot in the NESCAC championship game for the fourth straight year. Trinity was playing for the NESCAC title for the first time in program history after topping Middlebury in a 2-1, four-overtime marathon last night, which now stands as the longest game in Division III women’s ice hockey history.

Just after the midpoint of the first period, Trinity’s Celia Colman-McGaw beat an Amherst player to a puck in the corner and fed a pass to a streaking teammate crashing the Amherst net. Lord Jeff netminder Caroline Hu (Cerritos, CA) made a sprawling save moving left to right to keep the puck out of the net and the game tied 0-0.

With just 3:51 remaining in the first, Trinity struck first on a two-on-one break. Tri-captain Kim Weiss skated down the left wing, and set up Colman-McGaw for a one-timer just outside Hu’s crease. The Amherst goaltender was unable to get across the crease in time, as Colman-McGraw had an open net to shoot on.

Amherst ended the first period with a power play opportunity and again went on the man-advantage one minute into the second stanza. The Jeffs generated a handful of chances on the two power plays, but could not beat Trinity goaltender Isabel Iwachiw for an equalizer. Three minutes later, Trinity’s Britney McKenna broke down the left wing one-on-one with Hu during a Bantam power play, but the Amherst goalie was up to the task.

Just before the midpoint of the second period, Amherst once again went on the power play. After overloading the right side, Amherst’s Michelle McGann (New Berlin, Wis.) dropped the puck down to Emily Vitale (Cheshire, Conn.) at the left post. In traffic, Vitale batted the puck in front for senior tri-captain Kirsten Dier (Appleton, Wis.) to punch home a game-tying goal, drawing Amherst even at 1-1.

Amherst ended the second period putting heavy pressure on Iwachiw and the Bantam defense, including over a minute of 5-on-3 action. The Jeffs could not score a go-ahead goal before the period came to a close, but would begin the third with 17 seconds of power-play hockey remaining.

Midway through the third period, Amherst nearly took its first lead of the game as senior tri-captain Kate Dennett (Highlands Ranch, Colo.) found a bouncing rebound fall to her 10 feet in front of Trinity’s net. Dennett’s backhand shot lifted over a crowd, but not under Iwachiw’s crossbar, as the score remained 1-1.

In the final 10 minutes of regulation, Amherst held the puck in Trinity’s end for a majority of the play, but could not beat Iwachiw. As regulation ended, it was only fitting that the third game this weekend would head to overtime just as both semifinals had. Prior to overtime, Iwachiw had made 32 saves in the game.

Less than six minutes into overtime, Dennett fed Hanlon inside the right circle, who turned to fired a wrist shot that snuck past Iwachiw. The Trinity backstop made two saves in overtime but could not keep Hanlon’s game-winner out of the net. Hu finished the night with 14 saves in the win.

Amherst improves to 21-2-4 (12-1-3 NESCAC) with the victory, and earns the NESCAC’s automatic bid to the upcoming NCAA Tournament. Despite the loss, Trinity (21-4-2, 11-3-2 NESCAC) will likely still earn an at-large bid to the NCAAs when the field is announced on Monday.

2010 NESCAC WOMEN'S ICE HOCKEY CHAMPIONSHIP
  Quarterfinals - Saturday, Feb. 27
Time TBA at Higher Seeds
No. 8 at No. 1
No. 7 at No. 2
No. 6 at No. 3
No. 5 at No. 4

Semifinals - Saturday, March 6
at Highest Remaining Seed
1:00 p.m./4:00 p.m.

Championship - Sunday, March 7
2:00 p.m.

Format
The top eight teams in the conference will qualify for the NESCAC Women's Ice Hockey Championship.  First round games will be conducted on Saturday, February 27, 2010 with the semifinals and championship games conducted on Saturday, March 6 and Sunday, March 7 respectively.  The tournament champion will receive an automatic bid to the NCAA Division III Championship. 

Format if Men and Women are Playing at the Same Site
Preliminary Round
If both a men's and a women's first round game are being played at the same site, both games shall be played on Saturday with scheduled start times of 1:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m.  In odd years the men's game will be played first and in even years the women's game will be played first.

Semifinal and Championship Round
If both the men's and women's semifinals and finals are being played at the same site, one of the championships will be conducted Friday evening and Saturday evening.  As the men's NCAA championship tournament starts earlier than the women's championship, the men's games will be played on Friday/Saturday (with game times of 4:00 p.m./7:30 p.m. and 7:00 p.m.) with the women's games played Saturday/Sunday (with game times of 12:30 p.m./3:30 p.m. and 1:00 p.m.).

Seeding
Seeding will be based on final conference standings of double round robin play. The top four seeds will host quarterfinal games with the one seed drawing the 8th seed, the 7th seed will play at the 2nd seed, the 6th seed will play at the 3rd seed, and the 5th seed will play at the 4th seed. The highest remaining seed after quarterfinal action will host both the semifinal and final rounds.

Pairings
Pairings will be announced Sunday, February 20.

Tie Breaking Procedures
Ties will be broken as follows:

Head-to-head result (if teams play each other more than once during the regular season, the game that appears on the league schedule will be the game that is counted).

If teams tied during the regular season, or there is a 3-way or more tie, the following tie breaking procedure will be used:

• Best record among tying teams, against one another (head-to-head).
• Most conference wins (in games that are part of the conference schedule and count toward league standings).
• Comparison of results of conference games played against top 4 teams (including all teams at the 4th spot).
• Comparison of results of conference games played against top 8 teams (including all teams at the 8th spot).
• Comparison of results of conference games played against conference teams in rank order.
• Comparisons shall be made one team at a time starting with the highest ranked team.
• If the tie remains after comparing results against the highest ranked team, the results against the next team in rank order shall be used. This process is continued until a winner is determined.
• Coin flip (or similar random action involving all tied teams).

Note: In case of ties among three or more schools, the criteria above will be applied in order until a team is (or teams are) separated.  At that point, the process begins anew (returning to the first criteria) with the remaining teams.  The process is continued until the tie is eventually broken.  In cases where only a random action will break the tie of three or more teams, the random action will be applied to all teams involved in the tie.  For example, if three teams are tied and only a random action (pulling names out of a hat) will break the tie, each name will be pulled and seeded in order of being pulled.  Also, in the event that there are two (or more) groups of teams tied at different spots in the standings and the only criteria left that can be used to break those ties is a coin flip/random action, the coin flip/random action used to break the tie of one group (to put teams in rank order) will not affect the tie breaking procedures of the other group(s) of tied teams.