Paul Flanagan has heard the saying about the danger of a two-goal lead in hockey. The head coach of the Syracuse ice hockey team knows what can happen when a team gets a little too comfortable with its cushion and lets complacency get in the way of its focus and intensity.

So when the Orange took a 2-0 lead in the second period against Connecticut on Saturday, Flanagan knew how crucial his team’s reaction would be to the outcome of the game. And as if SU was following the hockey handbook of clichés step by step, a tripping penalty and UConn’s ensuing power-play goal gave the Huskies the opportunity to mentally take Flanagan’s squad out of the game.

The Orange would not concede anything.

‘I don’t think there was any panic, so there was good and bad there,’ Flanagan said. ‘They got back in the game, but there was no panic. There was no worrying about it. We just kept doing what we were doing.’

It didn’t take long for SU to display its focus and mental stability. Only 1:17 after UConn’s Taylor Gross cut the lead to one, the Orange answered back with the goal that defined the game.

Freshman forward Margot Scharfe knew before she stepped on the ice that her shift could provide the spark to keep her team fired up, and she knew whoever scored the next goal would take control of the game. Linemates Sadie St. Germain and Jessica Sorensen aggressively crashed the net and created a scoring chance on the doorstep, and Scharfe poked in her first career goal.

‘We were just trying to have a good cycle going there, and then we got the puck on net,’ Scharfe said. ‘Sadie dug it out, and there was a big scramble. I was pumped, but I was more pumped that we got a goal to make the lead a bit bigger. It gave us momentum, and from there we just kept rolling.’

Scharfe’s tally set off a chain of events that effectively shifted the game from a thriller to a 7-1 blowout before UConn could figure out what happened. Sophomore forward Isabel Menard notched the second of her three goals, and the Scharfe line struck again as St. Germain found the net after outracing the defense down the boards.

Flanagan said Scharfe’s goal not only began the rout after UConn’s initial threat, but also changed the entire style of the game to benefit the Orange. The constant assault of shots and pressure that came after the goal never gave UConn the chance to reboot its offense, and the Huskies were scrambling for the rest of the game as a result.

‘Their goal got them back into it psychologically, but Margot’s goal got our enthusiasm to the maximum,’ Flanagan said. ‘(UConn) got back on their heels a little bit. That was the key goal right there.’

The fact that his team was able to stay composed and handle the pressure of a slimming lead was a big improvement for Flanagan, who expressed a similar concern during SU’s previous game. The Orange had just dropped a 4-1 home loss to Providence on Friday, and Flanagan said a lack of focus was the team’s biggest problem.

The intensity and concentration were never there from the opening faceoff. But it helped that SU never had a lead to lose to the Friars.

‘In the locker room, you could just feel a difference (Saturday),’ St. Germain said. ‘We were just more focused, more alive, and we were ready to go. We’ve got to get excited before every game.’

jakrakow@syr.edu