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\n<\/div>\nThe Bulldogs showed tremendous resolve and confidence in front of a pressure-packed full house on the campus of Mercyhurst, coming back from two goals down to defeat the Lakers 3-2 in overtime. <\/p>\n
Jessica Koizumi scored her second goal of the night on the power play at 11:16 of the overtime. Noemie Marin fired a shot from the right faceoff circle that Lauria Hosier could not control and Koizumi fired the rebound into an open net.<\/p>\n
Koizumi was stunned when the puck went in. <\/p>\n
“I don’t even remember what happened,” she said. “All I know is the red light went on and I was swarmed by my teammates. I couldn’t breath.”<\/p>\n
It was a bitter ending for a Laker team that started so strong. This is the third straight Mercyhurst season to end with an overtime defeat in the NCAA quarterfinals.<\/p>\n
Despite some early signs of nerves, Mercyhurst controlled the first period and outshot the Bulldogs 15-7. The Lakers took a 1-0 lead on their only first-period power play, when Stephanie Jones fired a point blank shot past UMD goaltender Riitta Schaublin. The play was a give-and-go from teammate Melissa Dianoski from behind the UMD goal.<\/p>\n
The Lakers increased their lead early in the second period when Patty Kazmaier finalist Meghan Agosta picked off a clearing pass in the Bulldog zone, walked in and fired a low wrist shot in the right corner of the net.<\/p>\n
Coach Mike Sisti felt the Lakers then had an opportunity to put the Bulldogs away: “We had three three-on-one chances later in the period and didn’t score. We had the chance to blow the game wide open.” <\/p>\n
It didn’t happen.<\/p>\n
What did happen was Michaela Lanzl brought UMD within one goal when she scored on a backhand shot with 2:07 left in the second period. The assist went to Saara Tuominen.<\/p>\n
That goal seemed to energize the UMD bench and quiet the raucous sellout crowd of 1350 at the Mercyhurst Ice Center. <\/p>\n
The Lakers outshot the Bulldogs 12-9, having the better scoring chances in the period. Strangely, the play in the period was carried by Duluth, which was a premonition of things to come.<\/p>\n
In the third period, Duluth played solid transition hockey, and finally Koizumi capitalized. With 1:44 remaining, she scored after a wild scramble in front of Hosier to tie the game.<\/p>\n
“It was a group of experienced players that knew what they had to do to get to Lake Placid and that was the difference,” Miller said after the emotional win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The trip was long and many thought Minnesota Duluth didn’t stand much of a chance against No. 2 seed Mercyhurst, but somebody forgot to tell UMD coach Shannon Miller and her team that their task was almost impossible. The Bulldogs showed tremendous resolve and confidence in front of a pressure-packed full house on the campus […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8146"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8146"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=8146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}