With less than two minutes left in overtime, Syracuse head coach Paul Flanagan surveyed the ice and found he had five freshmen and a transfer skating for the game.

Junior transfer Jenn Gilligan was in goal in her third game for the Orange, while its second line teamed with defensemen Megan Quinn and Dakota Derrer for an all-freshman front. Although they couldn’t pull out the win for Syracuse, the newcomers didn’t give it away, either.

“I don’t know how they didn’t score more goals tonight,” Flanagan said, “You’re out there against an Olympian, No. 77 Kendall Coyne. … I think Derrer and Quinn did a great job out there.”

Coyne’s second-period goal tied the score at 1-1, which would hold for the rest of the game as Syracuse (1-1-1) and Northeastern (0-0-1) played to a stalemate at Tennity Ice Pavilion Friday night. In a back-and-forth game, a key stretch from the last four minutes of the first period through the end of the second included a flurry of chances for both teams, but only two goals.

“You got to put a team away,” Flanagan said, “You’re up one nothing, you’re dominating them, … two or three times we had good bids, we put it into somebody.”

Both teams saw power-play opportunities go to waste in the first 10 minutes of the game when neither team was able to sustain offensive chances. With 3:51 left in the period, the Orange’s all-freshman second line broke through.

Right wing Emily Costales brought the puck into the attacking zone alone and cut right. With no one to pass to, Costales shot toward the goal where two Northeastern defenders were waiting.

The two Huskies stalled in front of the goal looking to clear the puck when Orange left wing Alysha Burriss came flying in, took the puck and put it away in the left side of the net for her first career goal.

“A girl was trying to watch me and she kind of had her back to the puck so I just lifted her stick,” Burriss said.

The fast-paced first period came to an end with momentum on the SU side, and the Orange came out firing in the second.

“They (Northeastern) were a little tired, starting packing it in and I think we forced some shots,” Flanagan said of his team’s offensive push at the start of the second period.

But a Kaillie Goodnough penalty killed SU’s momentum. Although the Orange successfully killed the penalty, Coyne found herself with the puck at the left circle and sent in the equalizer with 7:18 remaining in the period.

Coyne, a member of the United States women’s national hockey team, fired a seemingly innocent slap shot through open ice toward the SU goal and, somehow, it found the top of the net.

“The goal that she scored just sort of had eyes,” Flanagan said. “Maybe our person that would’ve come out in the kill would’ve pressured more (if the penalty wasn’t over). I can’t say.”

Flanagan refused to blame the goal on the transition from penalty kill to normal defense, saying there was a breakdown in the defensive zone and someone missed an assignment, but he couldn’t tell who.

The Huskies dominated the rest of the period but were unable to score. The third was much like the first, fast-paced and back-and-forth. The Orange took a penalty with 1:28 left that the Huskies would take into an overtime period that yielded only two shots on goal.

With less than two minutes left in the five-minute extra period, center Shelby Herrington tried a wrap-around shot to Gilligan’s left, but this time the SU goalie protected the net and pushed the game to a tie.

“Get over to the other post as quickly as possible,” Gilligan said, making the process sound easy. “That’s pretty much it.”

Published on October 11, 2014 at 1:11 am