Paton suits up for Hockey East all-stars

Posted 2 months ago

Woodstock's Kelly Patonhad a big weekend, first leading her New Hampshire Wildcats to their ninth straight win and then suiting up for the Hockey East all-stars against the U.S. women's national team.

Paton, a Huron Park grad, scored three goals and assisted on another to propel the fourth-ranked University of New Hampshire women's hockey team past Rennselaer (N. Y.), 4-3, in non-conference action Saturday night at the Whittemore Center.

UNH, which netted the last three goals of the game to erase a 3-1 deficit, extended its unbeaten streak to seven games (4-0-3) to improve to 9-1-4 overall. RPI is now 4-7-4.

It was the second career hat trick for Paton, who also matched her personal best of four points.

Paton leads the team with 10 goals and 16 assists and is second with a plus-eight rating.

Kristina Lavoie tallied career highs in both assists and points with her one-goal, two-assist effort. UNH goaltender Lindsey Minton finished with 18 saves, including eight in the second period.

Alisa Harrison (two goals) and Allison Wright (goal, assist) led the Engineers' offence, and goalie Sonja van der Bliek stopped 21 shots, including 12 in the middle stanza.

UNH is at Northeastern next Sunday.

Sunday back at Whittemore Center, Paton was one of three Wildcats to suit up for the Hockey East All-Stars in a 4-0 loss to the U.S. women's national team in front of a crowd of 1,805, part of Team USA's preparation for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

"We held them to four goals, which is not too bad, considering they're probably one of the top two teams in the world," Paton said. "It was a good day."

The UNH representatives on the Hockey East side were happy to be playing at home.

"It was kind of a sense of comfort knowing you're in your own rink, playing in your own facility," Paton said. "We're used to the big (Olympic-sized) ice surface, so we didn't have to adjust much. Playing with new people, we had to feel them out. You could say it was strange, but it was fun."

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Woodstock's Adam Wallace scored his first goal of the season on the weekend, leading the Windsor Spitfires to a 7-1 win over the Sarnia Sting.

In 18 games, the 19-year-old defenceman has two points and 32 penalty minutes.

Richard Panik and Adam Henrique each scored twice for Windsor as the Spitfires thumped the Sarnia Sting 7-1 in Ontario Hockey League play Friday.

Taylor Hall, Adam Wallace and Kenny Ryan also scored for the Spitfires (20-3-3), who out-shot the Sting 57-14.

Sting coach Dave MacQueen, who is also from Woodstock, heaped praise on the Spits afterwards.

"That is, arguably, one of the best teams I've seen in all my years in this league," he said. "The only one that might be comparable is the London team that won the Memorial Cup a few years ago (2005)."

The Spitfires jumped out to a 3-0 lead after one period and held a 4-1 lead after the second. They outscored Sarnia 3-0 in the third period as they bombarded Sting goalie Shayne Campbell with an astonishing 31 shots, on their way to a 57-14 shots on goal advantage for the game.

"For 40 minutes we were still in the game. We didn't generate a lot offensively, but we had them at only eight scoring chances after two periods. But they just wear you down," said MacQueen. "We talked about staying out of the penalty box, but we didn't do that. ... Five-on- five we were okay, but they are so deep, they just grind you down."

-- Cory Smith