ERIE, Pa – The Mercyhurst University women's ice hockey team is back in action on Friday and Saturday for a two-gamel series against the host Penn State Nittany Lions, the outcome of the series will play a critical role in deciding the #1 seed for the conference's playoff tournament.
The Lakers (16-7-2, 6-2 CHA) and Nittany Lions (12-8-3, 5-2-1 CHA) will face off inside of Penn State's Pegula Ice Center at 2:00 p.m. on Friday and the same time the following day.
Laker Overview
The Lakers enter Happy Valley following a convincing sweep over Lindenwood two weekends ago winning 3-1 in game one and 4-2 the following day.
Vanessa Upson shined during the series, the freshman collected five points on four goals and one assist, she was joined by
Emily Pinto who produced four points, scoring once while handing out three helpers. The Lakers never trailed in the two games, and they added their ninth powerplay and fourth shorthanded goals of the season in Saturday's 4-2 win.
Against the Nittany Lions
Friday's contest with Penn State will be the 40th time that the two programs have played one another all-time. The Lakers hold a 22-8-9 record against the Nittany Lions, however Penn State has gotten the best of the Lakers in the past three seasons going 5-3-2 in that time span. The two teams split their first series of the season back in late October.
Scouting Penn State
The Nittany Lions are currently in third place in the CHA conference standings, tw spots behind the Lakers. Penn State has earned 68.8 percent of possible points inside the conference compared to the Lakers 75 percent. They hold a 5-2-1 CHA record to go along with a 12-8-3 overall record. Their biggest win came back on November 26th when they defeated No. 6 Minnesota Duluth.
Penn State is led by Kiara Zanon and Natalie Heising. The two are first and second in points out of every skater in the CHA. Heising's 16 goals tie her with Upson as best in the CHA while Zanon leads in assists with 20.
CHA Standings
Mercyhurst currently sits at the top of the conference standings after it was announced last week that the CHA will determine its final standings and playoff seeds using percentage of points won in each series. This change was implied due the cancellation of last week's Penn State and Lindenwood's series resulting in an imbalance in the number of conference games played by each school.
Notable Notes
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K.K. Thiessen became the Mercyhurst career leader in games played when she took the ice on January 14th against Lindenwood. The Graduate Student Thiessen has scored five goals and added 39 assists throughout her 150 career games played as a Laker.Mercyhurst holds the greatest scoring margin amongst the five teams in the CHA at +.88, the Lakers have scored 72 goals compared to only allowing 50 to make the average score of their games 2.9-2.0.
Up Next
The Lakers will come back to the Mercyhurst Ice Center next weekend where they will host RIT for a two-game series. Friday's opener will begin at 6:05 p.m. while Saturday's contest will start at 2:08 p.m. due to it being a televised broadcast on the CW Network.
