For 55 minutes Syracuse went toe-to-toe with the No. 2 team in the country.

The Orange won more faceoffs, took more shots and largely contained Clarkson’s star-studded first line led by Jaime Lee Rattray and Carly Mercer. SU firmly took the game to its bigger, stronger opponents.

But a five-minute defensive breakdown gave Clarkson (15-3-0, 7-1-0 ECAC) two goals and a mountainous three-goal lead with 15 minutes to play. A comeback nearly took the game to overtime, yet SU (9-8-1, 4-1-1 CHA) came up short for the second night in a row in a 5-4 loss at Tennity Ice Pavilion on Saturday.

“I think it bears down to playing the whole 60 minutes and we could’ve come out with the win,” captain Holly Carrie-Mattimoe said.

The five minutes that doomed the Orange began with a turnover by Kaillie Goodnough. Christine Lambert ended the play skating past Goodnough from the point and calmly tossing the puck over SU goaltender Jenesica Drinkwater.

A minute later Mercer picked up the puck just inside the right faceoff circle and slid a soft drive between Drinkwater’s legs for the 5-2 lead.

Head coach Paul Flanagan called timeout and pulled the junior goalie for freshman Julie Bengis.

“I think we needed the timeout just to understand that we’d been playing well,” Flanagan said. “That’s a couple bad breaks and we were right in that game. There’s nothing really, anything too special other than just ‘One at a time, let’s go to work here, protect Julie and you’ve all been on teams that have come back and won these kinds of games.’”

The break worked. Two minutes later, SU’s Melissa Piacentini caught Clarkson netminder Erica Howe, stole the puck from behind the net and passed it to Shiann Darkangelo for an easy goal.

There was no ignoring the fatigue that had set in for the Orange. Shifts got shorter and Flanagan even sent out reserve forwards Emily Auerbacher and Marianne Thomaris to spell his tired regulars with eight minutes left.

The Orange fought every battle for possession, though, winning the vast majority. The attack just lacked an edge. And while Clarkson noticeably slowed down too, the Golden Knights looked destined for a quiet last 10 minutes.

But Margot Scharfe’s goal with 1:16 remaining ensured the closing moments of the game would be anything but calm. Bengis skated off for Piacentini with one minute left and the Orange largely locked the puck around the Clarkson goal.

“We had a lot of chances,” Goodnough said. “We could’ve put that one away with a W, but it just didn’t go our way I guess.”

When Clarkson called a timeout with 17.1 second left in the game up 5-4, a sense of fear emanated from the visitors bench for the first time since the second period. The Orange’s last-ditch empty-net effort was ultimately unsuccessful, but SU was just one goal away from taking the nation’s elite to overtime.

The Orange skated off for first intermission with a 2-1 lead and failed to score on five shots on two power plays in the second period. Clarkson was not so forgiving, having buried a power-play goal 14 seconds into a five-on-four at the beginning of the second.

Nicole Renault, Caitlin Roach and Carrie-Mattimoe moved the puck efficiently against the Clarkson defense for long stretches of play, giving chances to Darkangelo and Carrie-Mattimoe, but each attempt failed to find the back of the net.

The misses were especially painful after Clarkson blew the game open early in the third, leaving the Orange to take heart in the scare it gave the Golden Knights but winless on the last weekend of the semester.

“I think it’s sucky in a way that we could’ve beat them but it’s also good because we know we can beat them and they’re second in the nation right now,” Goodnough said. “We just got to work hard while we’re on break and come back ready to finish up the season here.”

Published on December 9, 2012 at 11:41 am

Contact Jacob: jmklinge@syr.edu | @Jacob_Klinger_