On Friday night, the Lindenwood women's ACHA Division I ice hockey team dropped their weekend opener against the McKendree Bearcats by the score of 10-2 at McKendree Rec-plex in Lebanon, Illinois.
Lindenwood started the scoring on Friday by capitalizing on the power play at 5:52. 50 seconds into the man advantage,
Madison Teague and
Ava Bilton connected with
Hilary Pearce to give the Lions a 1-0 lead. The assists were Teague's 26th and Bilton's 13th, and the goal was Pearce's fifth of the year. The Lions held their 1-0 lead until the 12:07 mark when the Bearcats beat Lindenwood emergency goaltender,
Alison Blaskovich, and tied the game 1-1. McKendree added two more goals at 12:59 and 18:35- the second of which on the power play- and held a 3-1 lead with less than two minutes to play in the first period.
Ardyn Hawryshko and the Lions answered back, however, and trimmed the deficit to one with under a minute to play in the period. Pearce and
Devyn Doti tallied their 21st and fifth assists on Hawryshko's 18th goal of the year. The Lions had just four shots on goal in the first period but scored two goals. Lindenwood trailed McKendree 3-2 after one period of play.
The ensuing 40 minutes of play was all Bearcats. The Lions were only able to muster five shots on goal for both the second and third periods combined and were unable to sneak any of the five pucks past the Bearcat netminder. 4:22 into the second period, McKendree extended their lead to 4-2. The Bearcats added another goal at 12:34, a power play goal at 13:55, and two more scores at 15:05 and 19:00 to make it 8-2 heading into the third period.
In the third period, the Bearcats added back-to-back goals at 10:28 and 10:48 to make it 10-2 and that score would hold for the remainder of the contest.
It was a tough night both offensively and defensively for the Lions as they were outshot 42-9. Blaskovich stopped 32 of 42 shots and was handed the loss. For Lindenwood, Friday's defeat drops the Lions record to 11-16-2 on the year and 1-7-2 away from home ice.
The Lions will be back in action tomorrow afternoon when they square off against the Bearcats in the final regular season game of 2024-25. Puckdrop is scheduled for 3:45 p.m. from the McKendree Rec-plex.
