The Minnesota Frost hosted the New York Sirens on Sunday afternoon, Jan. 25, on another bitterly cold day in St. Paul, Minnesota. They looked to bounce back after a tough overtime loss to the Montréal Victoire on Wednesday, Jan. 21. They had Maddie Rooney back in net, and they got the first goals of the game.
The Frost jumped out with back-to-back goals in the first and held the lead until the Sirens responded late in the period to get back within one. The Frost stepped up in the second period with two more goals to extend their lead to three goals. Although the Sirens scored a goal in the third, the Frost responded with two more goals and took the win 6-2. In this article, we’ll look at a few takeaways, starting with their scoring spree.
Frost’s Scoring Spree
The Frost had a huge scoring boost to start the game with goals from both Taylor Heise and Kendall Coyne-Schofield that gave them a big two-goal lead. Coyne-Schofield leads the team with 16 points, with Heise not far behind her with 14 points. While Coyne-Schofield has been rolling pretty consistently all season, Heise started the season on a bit of a scoring drought, but she’s been doing well lately.
Following their scoring in the first, the Frost’s Katy Knoll jumped into the scoring and got her fifth and sixth goals of the season. She came onto the scene last season and has been a force so far this season. Following her goal, which gave the Frost a two-goal lead again, Grace Zumwinkle jumped onto the scoreboard. She, like Heise, started out the season a little slow but has heated up lately with five points in the past four games.
“Yeah, well we talked about it earlier that from her game from the beginning of last year, till now is night and day different in just her confidence level, she’s a physical player, she’s got skills, she can shoot pucks, she has kind of an awkward release so I’m told from our goalies so, which is kind of an interesting thing when you think about it so I think just for her, her confidence level and her overall game. She can play in the D-zone, she’s very reliable, she can play offensive, it’s just been great to see her develop as a second year player which you hope players will be more confident in year two but it doesn’t always happen but Katy’s (Knoll) really done a great job for us,” said head coach Ken Klee about Knoll’s improvement this season.
Rooney Steps Up Again
It was talked about in the last game when Maddie Rooney was in the net that a few times earlier this season, when she played, there wasn’t much scoring in front of her to give her a chance to take a breath. In the last game, they scored six in front of her, so she didn’t have to worry about it being a one-goal game. This time against the Sirens, they put up two quick goals, and although one did sneak by her early in the game off of her teammate’s skate, she was solid from that point on.
There was one more goal late in the third that she couldn’t do much about as her defense left a Sirens’ player all alone. That was the final goal; they got past Rooney, who had a very solid game, and allowed her team to build the lead they did. She made 25 saves on 27 shots and was ready for everything that came at her.
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“It was good, obviously we got off to a good start, when you can score back-to-back shifts I think it really boosts the morale on the bench, and everyone’s into it, everyone’s jumping and having lots of energy so, but we knew they were going to make a push, they’re a good team, they’ve been working hard all year so they did and I was just really proud of the way we responded after that to be able to kind of extend the lead in the second and then just play simple in the third,” said Klee about the overall effort through the game.
The Frost will have a few days to process this big win before they are back in action at home on Wednesday, Jan. 28, when they host the Vancouver Goldeneyes. That will be the Frost’s final game before the Olympic break.
