Four minutes into the third period, Syracuse (4-8-1, 4-3-0 College Hockey America) was in control. Sophomore forward Emma Polaski had just scored her third goal of the game to give Syracuse a 4-2 lead.

RIT (3-6-4, 1-2-0 CHA) then scored four unanswered goals to sink SU, 6-4, in Tennity Ice Pavilion.

RIT’s Kendall Cornine put the Tigers on the board first, beating Maddi Welch short side with a wrist shot three minutes into the game.

Redshirt junior Lindsay Eastwood responded in the second period by blasting a slapshot from the point past RIT’s Terra Lanteigne. Out of SU’s top-six leading goal scorers, three — Jessica DiGirolamo, Allie Munroe, and Eastwood — are defenders.

“The D are jumping into the play, and it’s creating offensive chances and we’re capitalizing on them,” Eastwood said earlier this week. “So that’s definitely huge and, you know, take care of business in the back and go to work up front is always the way we like to put it.”

Eastwood’s third goal of the season came on the power play and began a high-scoring second period.

Later in the second, RIT took back the lead with a goal from forward Logan Land, whose wrist shot lasered past Welch’s glove. Then, Polaski took over.

It took ten seconds for Polaski to even the game again with her team-leading sixth goal of the season. Then, she finished a three-on-one break to give SU its first lead, at 3-2 15 minutes into the second period.

Polaski’s eight goals are four more than SU’s second scoring leader, freshman Lauren Bellefontaine.

Polaski wasn’t done, though. To open the third period, she redirected a shot in front of the net to record her first hat trick of her SU career. Her third goal of the game gave SU a 4-2 lead with 15 minutes remaining in the game.

RIT forward Claudia Black’s goal with eight minutes left in the game made it 4-3. Then, RIT tied it back up with a flukey goal late in the game. A Tiger forward dumped it into SU’s defensive zone and it looked like Welch collected it. It appeared to be a routine play, but Welch couldn’t find the puck at her skate before Kathryn Kennedy crashed the net and snuck the puck in to tie the game.

RIT continued their run by scoring on a deflection 45 seconds later to retake the lead.

An empty-netter made it 6-4.

Syracuse is now 0-5-1 at home. They travel to the University of Vermont next Friday and don’t play another home game until Dec. 6, when Colgate comes to Syracuse.

Published on November 16, 2018 at 11:32 pm

Contact Danny: dremerma@syr.edu | @DannyEmerman