THE MATCHUP

Saint Mary's vs. St. Catherine vs. Friday, Nov. 19, 2004 SMU Ice Arena 7:05 p.m.

GAMEDAY PLAYER PROFILE

Jenny Hocum Year Senior Position Forward Hometown Rochester, MN

For the official GameDay Program for today's game pdf / click here (pdf)

WINONA, Minn. — In their first two games, Melissa Mondo (Vadnais Heights, Minn.) accounted for five of the Saint Mary's University women's hockey team's six goals in the Cardinals' 2-1, 4-3 sweep of Finlandia last weekend.

That was the good news.

The bad news was, Mondo suffered a high ankle sprain during the latter of those two wins, forcing the SMU sophomore out of lineup when the Cardinals traveled to Lake Forest for a pair of nonconference games.

And without Mondo, the SMU offense proved to be stuck in neutral, as the Cardinals managed just one goal in the two games vs. the Foresters — falling 3-0 last Friday and 2-1 in the rematch on Saturday.

"Not having Melissa in the lineup hurt us offensively — both even strength and on the powerplay," said SMU coach Duncan Ryhorchuk. "But you can't use (her injury) as a crutch, she can't be the only person we rely on to score — we've got to get other people stepping up and contributing a little more.

"It's not like we didn't have our chances, we had a lot of good scoring opportunities, we just didn't have that little extra 'push' to get the puck in the back of the net."

Kerry Gotowka gave Lake Forest (1-0-2) all the offense it would need in Friday's game, netting her first goal of the season midway through the opening period. Ali Neal added her second of the year at 14:14 of the second period and Laura Wilson closed out the scoring late in the third period with her second of the year.

Lake Forest goalie Sally Bevis did her part on the other end, stopping all 24 Cardinal shots — including 11 in the final period, when SMU outshot the Foresters 11-8. Nikki Jung (Inver Grove Heights, Minn.) finished with 26 saves for SMU.

It took two-and-a-half more periods, but the Cardinals finally scored against the Foresters with a third-period goal in Saturday's rematch — unfortunately for the Cardinals, one goal was one too few as the Foresters completed their nonconference sweep with a 2-1 victory.

The Foresters got on the board 11 minutes into the opening period Saturday, as Courtney DeHoey beat SMU goalie Amanda Gage (Lino Lakes, Minn.) for her second goal of the season.

Lake Forest pelted Gage with 19 shots through the game's first two periods, but the SMU sophomore held the Foresters to just that one goal as Lake Forest held a 1-0 advantage entering the game's final period.

Nichole Greco made it 2-0 at 3:14 of the third period, before Rachel Harrison (Madison, Wis.) ended the Cardinals' scoring drought with her first of the year, scoring an unassisted power play goal at 10:09 of the third period.

That, however, would be as close as SMU would get as the Cardinals dropped their second straight in falling to 2-2 on the year.

"It's not the type of outcome we were hoping for, but we look at those first four games as our preseason — a tune-up before the games really start to matter," explained Ryhorhcuk, whose team opens conference play at home on Friday, playing host to St. Catherine. "Those first four games were good for us, we were able to see where we are at, and hopefully, we'll be able to correct the things that need to be corrected."