Series Grades: Penn State Women’s Hockey vs. RIT

Story posted January 16, 2023 in CommRadio, Sports by Logan Bourandas

Penn State reopened CHA play this weekend taking on the two-win RIT Tigers.

RIT played the Nittany Lions tough last season despite its overall record and that remained true this season.

The Nittany Lions ended up winning the opening game of the series despite a late Tigers comeback attempt but the two teams tied the next day to close out the series.

Here’s a look at how each position group performed in the series.

Offense: B+

Kiara Zanon elevates this grade a lot.

The junior forward picked up career point number 100 in game one of the series.

Zanon actually managed to record two shorthanded goals on the same RIT powerplay early in the game.

That effort made her the fourth Penn State player to hit the milestone being the fastest to do it in program history.

Zanon followed up that game with another goal the next day.

What makes the grade lower than it should be is the Penn State offense noticeably slowed down after the first period of game one.

The blue and white scored three of their overall six goals on the weekend in that period and the Tigers were able to capitalize on that which we’ll get to later on.

Penn State had come into the series scoring four or more goals in four straight games so seeing the team fall well short of that in game two hurts the overall grade here.

Defense: A

It was easy to tell in both games who dominated in this area.

Penn State heavily outshot the Tigers in both games as RIT failed to go over the 20-shot mark in either game.

The Nittany Lions were even able to hold the Tigers to three shots or less in three periods throughout the weekend.

In game one, the Nittany Lions had dominated during the first two periods but let their foot off the gas in the third with two Tiger goals to cut the 4-0 Penn State lead in half.

One of those goals was scored by sophomore forward Jordyn Bear, her first career goal, and she would find the back of the net again in the first period the next day.

The Nittany Lions held the Tigers quiet for a while but would allow the game-tying goal midway through the third period to sophomore forward Athena Vasdani.

Overall, only allowing four goals during the two-game series is good and almost resulted in a sweep but this unit has allowed less than that in four different series this season.

Goaltending: B

The low shot totals were previously talked about which makes grading the goaltending a tougher task.

However, for the first time in a long time, junior Josie Bothun didn’t start both games as freshman Katie DeSa started game two.

To open up the series, Bothun started out strong but faltered late which didn’t affect the win column.

Bothun picked up win No. 15 on the year while making 14 saves, her lowest save total on the year in games where she played all 60 minutes.

DeSa had to play five minutes longer with her start going into overtime.

In just her second career start, DeSa picked up 11 saves while allowing two goals.

It was her first start since late October against Franklin Pierce where DeSa picked up a 4-1 win.

Coaching: A

Following the first period of the opening game, Penn State played a relatively clean series.

In that period however, the Tigers had two early power plays including a five-minute major which saw the ejection of freshman Maddy Christian.

The grade remains high however as the Nittany Lions scored two shorthanded goals on one of those RIT power plays, both scored by Zanon.

After that period, the Nittany Lions only had one penalty the rest of the series leading to a clean effort from the Jeff Kampersal-led squad.

Logan Bourandas is a senior majoring in broadcast journalism. To contact him, email lxb5412@psu.edu.