(Photo courtesy of PWHL) “Abby Newhook scored a goal in Boston’s 3-0 win over the Seattle Torrent”
Jason Cooke
Connector Editor
LOWELL — Aerin Frankel made history on Saturday night at the Tsongas Center.
Recording her fifth shutout of the season, the Boston Fleet’s star goalie set a Professional Women’s Hockey League record for most shutouts in a season.
Frankel stopped all 21 shots she faced in the team’s 3-0 blanking over the Seattle Torrent in front of a capacity crowd of 6,164 fans in Lowell. Frankel leads the league with wins (14) and is the backbone of the first-place Fleet, which shares the top spot in the league standings with the Minnesota Frost (42 points).
Scoring goals for Boston in the victory were Abby Newhook, Susanna Tapani and Haley Winn.
The race for a playoff spot is shaping up to be very tight. The Fleet (10-5-2-4) plays four of its nine remaining games at the Tsongas, including a battle with the Vancouver Goldeneyes on Tuesday (7 p.m.). Boston has yet to lose a game at the Tsongas Center this season (3-1-0-0).
“It was probably our most complete game that we’ve played since the break,” Fleet head coach Kris Sparre said following Saturday’s win. “I really liked a lot of parts of that game from start to finish and obviously, it was great to see the puck go in the net more than once.”
The Fleet was shut out for the first time of the season last week in a 2-0 loss to the Toronto Sceptres and bounced back in a major way, albeit against the last-place Torrent who are without franchise fixtures Hannah Bilka and Hilary Knight due to injury.
Boston was nearly perfect in all aspects of Saturday’s game. The Fleet outshot Seattle 33-21 and held a territorial advantage for most of the game. It scored first and was a perfect 4-for-4 on the penalty kill to keep Seattle at bay in the first period.
“I thought our opening shift was really good,” said Torrent head coach Steve O’Rourke. “We know we’re having some challenges scoring goals here and we could have gotten that first one off the hop there. I think it just kind of sets the tone and we got out of that first period even. It’s a challenge and we had some looks, but going up against a goaltender of that caliber is challenging.”
Newhook’s goal, which came at 8:06 of the first period to give Boston a quick 1-0 lead, was picture-perfect and epitomized what Boston is trying to do to score more goals.
Instead of dumping the puck in the zone for a retrieval on the forecheck, Newhook entered the attacking zone with patience before sliding the puck to a driving Megan Keller below the goal line. Keller skated with the puck around the net before finding Newhook in the slot for a one-timer.
“One of the focuses for us tonight was we certainly want to play behind other teams,” Sparre said. “We want to put pucks in and chip them and wear them down with our forecheck, but also we don’t want to handcuff our players. We want them to feel like they can make plays out there. So our focus tonight was, ‘Let’s make some hockey plays.’”
Newhook and Keller — two of Boston’s more talented playmakers — put that sentiment on full display in the sequence. Newhook’s sixth goal of the season leads all Boston rookies, while Keller’s assist marked a new career-high in points (6-10-16).
“I think we’ve been dumping the puck in a lot recently and using our forecheck to our advantage, but this game we wanted to focus more on possessing the puck and making plays under pressure,” Newhook said. “So the play kind of opened up, and I saw Keller going down the wall, so I made the play down to her and tried to find a seam, and she made a great pass to me in front of the net.”
Tapani and Winn scored goals in the third period to put the finishing touches on a de facto homecoming to Lowell. Boston’s last game at the Tsongas Center was on Jan. 28 before the Olympic break.
