HENNICKER, N.H. – The Castleton women's hockey team looked dominant from start to finish in Friday night's conference-opener against New England College, getting contributions across the board en route to a 6-1 win.
A familiar face opened up the scoring for the Spartans (3-1-0, 1-0-0 NEHC), as Assistant Captain
Ryanne Mix scored her first goal of the season off a rebound from
Darby Palisi to make it a 1-0 game six minutes in. Castleton was quick to act on an ensuing penalty call on the Pilgrims, pulling netminder
Marina Mirabella to get the player advantage before ultimately scoring the night's opening goal.
The Spartans would get 17 more shots on net in the period but could not get anything past NEC's goaltender, and would enter the first intermission up one.
The second period ran even for the first 15 minutes before
Brooke Greenwood tallied her second goal of the season on a nice feed from
Samantha Lawler to double Castleton's lead. Just over a minute later,
Kaitlin Bardellini would score her first score of the year, corralling a Spartan miss before finishing the job, giving Castleton a 3-0 lead heading into the final period.
Almost six minutes into the third,
Katie Nealon would add herself to the scoring column with her first career goal. The Spartans won a face-off and moved the puck around the ice before Nealon capitalized on blocked shot and found the back of the net.
The potential shutout was busted 40 seconds later when NEC's (0-3-0, 0-3-0 NEHC) AK Fuentes converted on a turnover in the neutral zone and scored to cut the lead back to three. That would be the only goal to get by Mirabella, though, as the freshman saved 19 shots in her collegiate debut.
Castleton would add two more goals from
Emily Harris and
Nancy Benedict to extend their lead to five and earn the 6-1 win. By the final buzzer the Spartans had outshot the Pilgrims 63-20 in what ended up being a comfortable win.
Next up for Castleton will be a much tougher test, as they head to Northfield Saturday, November 13 to take on Norwich. Puck-drop is scheduled for 3 p.m.
