Right before the overtime period got underway Saturday, Paul Flanagan gave his Syracuse team a warning.

‘We talked before the overtime that everything’s magnified,’ the Syracuse head coach said. ‘How you use your body, how you use your stick and we talked about it. You’ve got to be careful, and plus, you’ve got to make plays.

‘Those are just two plays we’d like to have back, but you can’t.’

Those two plays were two penalties called against the Orange in the span of a 1:30, leading to a two-man power-play advantage. Niagara cashed in with a game-winning goal, leaving Syracuse players to trail off the ice following a disappointing 2-1 loss in front of 341 at Tennity Ice Pavilion on Saturday. SU (8-15-3, 0-3-3 College Hockey America) ended the weekend by earning just one point in two games against the Purple Eagles (8-11-6, 1-2-1), having tied them 3-3 in front of 333 fans Friday. SU’s shorthanded unit offset the majority of the penalties called against the Orange with scrappy, persistent play, but in the end, Syracuse couldn’t overcome all the infractions.

Syracuse committed nine penalties in the contest Saturday, the second-highest total this season for SU. The penalties on the Orange didn’t show any negative side effects on the scoreboard, though.

Each time the Purple Eagles had the advantage, Syracuse found a way to kill off the penalty and held its ground defensively.

‘I give credit to (Niagara), they just kept coming at us,’ Flanagan said. ‘But I really thought that we counterpunched pretty well.’

In the third period, Syracuse faced heavy offensive pressure down a player for close to four minutes after penalties were called against Margot Scharfe and Sadie St. Germain. Just as Scharfe was about get out of the penalty box, St. Germain was sent in for two minutes.

Although Niagara unleashed multiple shots, the Orange didn’t let many of those shots reach goaltender Kallie Billadeau. Instead, the SU players sacrificed their bodies, blocking and contesting many of the Purple Eagles’ attempts.

After that penalty kill ended, the Orange was challenged again a couple of minutes later when Lisa Mullan was whistled for tripping. And once again, Syracuse denied Niagara’s power play, including a couple of highlight-reel saves from Billadeau, who finished with 28 saves.

Though the stretch was a remarkable one for Syracuse in a tied game, it’s the sort of play Billadeau has seen all season.

‘We have a great penalty kill, we do,’ Billadeau said. ‘They sacrifice their bodies, get in front of shots for me and it’s just hard. It only takes one goal.’

And that one power-play goal for Niagara followed those ‘two plays’ that Flanagan alluded to after the loss.

Penalties against Jessica Sorensen and Shiann Darkangelo within a 1:30 span gave the Purple Eagles a 5-on-3 advantage that led to Syracuse’s demise. An open Kristin Richards banged in the game-winner from the right side of the cage at an almost 180-degree angle, deflecting the puck off Billadeau’s pad and into the net to win the game.

While some penalties were easy to spot, including the last two that cost the Orange the game, the officiating left Flanagan and some SU players frustrated.

Flanagan said the officiating was confusing, leaving players uncertain of what they could and could not do. Senior forward Megan Skelly said while she wishes she could control what the referees call, the only thing Syracuse could do was worry about its own ice performance.

Senior defender Taylor Metcalfe was a little blunter.

‘It was bad reffing,’ Metcalfe said. ‘I don’t know. I thought we did really well for what we had to deal with.’

Metcalfe added she felt the team didn’t have a clear idea on what the officials were calling, something all too common in the sport.

Regardless of how bad the officiating was, cutting down on penalties is something Flanagan knows his team has to do, especially with how it affected the Orange against Niagara.

Though he doesn’t want his players to lose that intensity and edge they need to be successful, he also knows they are still capable of making wiser decisions to stay out of the box.

‘If they call you, they call you. That’s why you work on the penalty kill,’ Flanagan said. ‘But we just have to be smarter with some of the things that we manage.’

dgproppe@syr.edu

Published on January 22, 2012 at 12:00 pm