MADISON — Kristina Bahl’s slapshot from beyond the near faceoff circle made it’s way through traffic and beat Penn State goalie Katie DeSea with 10:25 left in overtime to send St. Lawrence to the NCAA Quarterfinals for the first time since 2017. The Saints will face host Wisconsin at 2 p.m. Central on Saturday. The game will stream free on BTN+.
The secret to St. Lawrence’s success, it turns out, is applesauce. Seems fitting for a team that plays its home games at Appleton Arena.
Bahl said she was looking to refuel before overtime and found the snack cart in Madison looked different than what she’s used to.
“I never eat applesauce, but they have applesauce that they provided us with and I just like started chugging a couple after the third because I was so like hungry and I needed energy. And I was like, ‘wow, everyone’s eating applesauce’ for the next game because that was some crazy level energy. It was insane. So it was applesauce,” she said.
It was Bahl’s first-career overtime goal. And it came because of a strong forecheck from Kiley Mastel, who chased down the puck behind the net, winning it and feeding out to the blue line.
“I went down for my celly and Kiley (Mastel) was jumping on me and I said, ‘That’s all you. That’s all you. You made that happen with your forecheck.’ The goal doesn’t happen without the forecheck,” said Bahl.
The game was a chess match for nearly 70 minutes as both teams had chances to take the lead. The goalies were the standouts as DeSa made a career-high 43 saves and St. Lawrence’s Emma-Sofie Nordström stopped 36.
Both coaches felt their teams came out timid to start, but settled into their game. Penn State seemed to have the edge early, but the Saints pushed back in the second and outshot PSU 20-14.
The last time St. Lawrence played in the NCAA Tournament, only eight teams qualified and their first game was the quarterfinal. With the expanded field, they needed to earn this win to make that round. SLU’s last NCAA win was in 2007, when they defeated New Hampshire 6-2 in the quarterfinal before losing to Wisconsin – who went on to win the title that season – 4-0 in the semifinal.
Despite the long game, Nordström said she had a feeling that her team would not lose.
“I had this feeling inside my body and I just knew we’re going to win, when the question was. We have such a good group. I was just waiting and thinking ‘I won’t let in a goal before the Penn State goalie lets in a goal,'” she said.
Both netminders were key in keeping a clean scoresheet and preventing the other team from gaining an advantage, coming up with big saves again and again.
“Emma was was fantastic all night. She’s been great for us all year. She’s done such a good job just getting better and better and better and better. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a goalie improve at the level that she has. She certainly was the backbone there tonight,” said St. Lawrence coach Chris Wells.
The close nature of the game made it an especially difficult loss, said Penn State coach Jeff Kampersal. This was the Nittany Lions second-straight overtime loss in the NCAA Regional semifinal. But he said he talked to his team after the game about how much growth their program had seen in recent years.
Fifth-year forward and captain Julie Gough was in tears after the game, explaining that she feels her feelings very hard. She said it was difficult to put into words what her time at Penn State has meant.
“Five years ago, we would never ever have thought we would be in this position. Now we’ve won CHA Championships. We won the regular season. We’ve been to the tournament. This is the expectation now. Being someone who has helped the team get to that spot has been nothing short of incredible. But I think just leaving this program, I’m confident that Tessa (Janecke) and the rest of the players are going to take this team to another level. I’m confident in everyone’s abilities,” said Gough.
