By Luke Galati
The Ryerson Rams woman’s hockey team dropped its home opener 5-2 against the York Lions Saturday at the Mattamy Athletic Centre.
Andrea Joyce, Sarai Whitty and Lisa Stathopulos each netted goals as the Lions (1-0-0) erased a 2-0 deficit and storm back to victory.
Ryerson (0-2-0) started the game scorching hot, as forward Blair Malthaner starting the scoring just after the nine minute mark. Malthaner’s gathered up an errand Megan Lee rebound before she buried her first career OUA goal into the back of the net.
Just four minutes later, Ryerson’s Clair Sabine rushed on the right side of the ice, leading to a two-on-one break, where Sabine passed the puck to forward Melissa Wronzberg. Wronzberg managed to poke her stick in front of the York defender deflecting the puck in the net, to extend the lead to 2-0 going into the second period.
Ryerson’s interim head coach, Pierre Alain,was able to draw on many positives in the first period.
“We’ve been talking about fast starts,” said Allain, “and that was the best first period the team has played since August.”
But things only went downhill for the Rams after that.
The York Lions’ forward Andrea Joyce started the scoring onslaught on a power play at the 6:02 minute mark by shooting a quick wrist shot off a faceoff, won by teammate Stathopulos, to cut the deficit to 2-1.
Joyce scored her second goal of the season, just over three minutes later, by picking up a rebound and sniping a quick shot, top right corner past Ryerson’s goalie Alex Armstrong.
York scored their third goal in the period after Witty collected a pass from teammate Kristen Barbara and toe dragged past a Ryerson defender before shooting a wristing a shot past Armstrong.
In the third period, Ryerson was putting pressure on York, trying to come back from a 3-2 deficit, until Stathopulos put the game out of reach with York’s third power play goal of the game.
Witty, added the nail in the coffin, scoring her second goal of the game in an empty net, with seven seconds remaining.
“I think we stopped playing in the moment and got too far ahead of ourselves, assuming we had the game in the bag, when we had over two thirds of the game to go,” said Rams forward Blair Malthaner.
The backbreaker for Ryerson was the nine penalties they took, compared to York’s three penalties, committed throughout the game.
“We ask them to play a physical game within the rules, so [not taking bad penalties] is what we’re going to address the team on this week,” said coach Alain.
“Our forchecking was really good tonight, we created a ton of turnovers and we will work on our PK [penalty kill] for next week.”
Ryerson will be looking to snap its current two game losing streak, this Thursday, against Brock (0-2-0) at the Seymour-Hannah Centre in St. Catherines, Ont.
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