Oct. 18, 2012
By: Sean Flanery, GoPSUsports.com Student Staff Writer
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - The Penn State Women's hockey team is looking to regain its focus and key in on a couple of important issues heading into this weekend's series at Sacred Heart.
Now that the Nittany Lions (1-3-0) have a few games under their belts and the inaugural season jitters are slowly wearing off, a few key issues have come to the forefront that the Lions will look to address before traveling to Sacred Heart (2-2-0) this weekend.
"I think the big thing we are trying to eliminate are the stick penalties," said Penn State head coach Josh Brandwene. "It's a matter of keeping your feet moving and it's a matter of just grinding away without reaching. Again, it's one of those lessons that we need to take away from [last] weekend because it certainly caught up to us at the end."
So far this season, 10 of Penn State's 15 penalties have come by the way of stick penalties, such as hooking, slashing or tripping. Freshman forward Micayla Catanzariti (Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif.) was responsible for a few herself last weekend, but she says the lesson will stay with her moving forward.
"I am definitely an aggressive player," said Catanzariti, "but at the same time most of (my) penalties were stick penalties and those just don't fly. You can always control those. It was an eye-opener."
While the penalties have been costly thus far this season, the Nittany Lions should catch a break this weekend as their opponent, Sacred Heart, is currently 0-13 on the power play. The Nittany Lions and their opponent have both posted comparable statistics when it comes to special teams play this season. The Lions, like the Pioneers of Sacred Heart, have yet to convert on the power play. While the Lions will look to improve on their power play production, they will also look to limit opponents with their penalty kill.
The Nittany Lions have allowed five goals in their opponent's 15 power play opportunities this season. Many of the opponent's power play goals came this past weekend versus Syracuse, but coach Brandwene believes his young team will learn and move forward.
"We went over some adjustments on our penalty kill and the execution just wasn't there," said Brandwene. "That's something that a young team just has to learn from."
The Nittany Lions had this week to practice and prepare for the upcoming series and with 17 freshmen on the team, the young Lions are still adjusting to the speed of play and the new experiences they face week in and week out. Catanzariti explained that at the Division I level the game is always changing around them and the team is forced to make quick adjustments.
"Every weekend is different," said Catanzariti. "Last weekend we were playing one system and this weekend we are playing a completely different system and pretty much every period we are doing something new and buying into those changes this season is going to be key and that's something that we're working on."
The Nittany Lions will travel to Fairfield, Conn. to play Sacred Heart in a two-game series beginning on Friday night at 7 p.m. EST. Coach Brandwene believes that like every other weekend this upcoming weekend will be another first for the program, but the goal for the team will always remain constant.
"Every weekend is a new experience for these kids," said Brandwene. "So now to have the home opener under their belt and to have some conference play under their belts, it's a really good opportunity for us to assess the things we need to do to be as successful as possible and our goal hasn't changed. Our goal is to get better every week with the goal of playing our best hockey at the end of the season in the league playoffs. If you can do that anything can happen."
- NITTANY LIONS -