London, ON – Arnica Bulmer sent the capacity crowd of over 1200 area elementary school students back to school happy with her overtime winner as Western tops Laurier 3-2 on Thursday afternoon as the Mustangs hosted their annual School Day game.
The 1st year Mustangs skated the puck nearly the length of the ice late into the extra frame to give Western back-to-back wins.
"I skated wide and just tried to go hard to the net and put it over her shoulder," said Bulmer post-game "It was super exciting, overtime is definitely stressful but when you want the puck you just need to skate hard and try your best and it worked out today,"
This was the third straight game that went to OT for Western, taking a split with the Windsor Lancers over the weekend.
"The girls battled hard today and found the back of the net a few times today and I honestly thought we may have had a couple more today but a win is a win and I am happy we got it today," said Mustangs Head Coach Candice Moxley "Our side of the conference is tight and the last two seasons for us has come down to the final game of the year so we need to keep finding ways to win to put ourselves in good situation here in the second half,"
GAME RECAP
The Mustangs opened the scoring in the 1st period when Alyssa Wouda skated into the offensive zone, found some space around the faceoff dot, elected to hold on to the puck and sent a laser wrist shot that popped the water bottle in the Laurier net and gave Western a 1-0 lead.
Later in the period, the Mustangs would continue the offensive pressure in the Laurier zone. After a shot on net, the Laurier goaltender kicked out a rebound back towards the blue line and Mustangs defender Emma Campbell had plenty of room to step into a slap shot and pick the top corner over the goalies blocker to extend the Western lead to 2-0 and they would hold the score through the 1st intermission.
The second period would see the Golden Hawks respond with a goal early in the period from Kylie Laliberte nearly 5 minutes into the period and Laliberte would net a goal again just after the 15 minute mark when Laurier was on the powerplay to tie the game at 2-2 through 40 minutes.
Both sides battled in the third period, with Mustangs Goaltender Brooke Vaccari coming up with multiple key saves to keep Western in the game.
"She's got ice water in her veins I think," said Moxley of her netminder "For a first year goaltender to come into this lineup, it's exciting to see what she is bringing to this team and she has come up with some unbelievable highlight reel saves for us and we are super excited to have her,"
Vaccari made 27 saves in the win for Western.
"After they got their goals I told myself I just needed to keep calm and go back to my game and everything will work out," said Vaccari "I just like to take deep breaths that's the main thing and just try to zone everything else out and it seems to keep me calm, cool and collected,"
In overtime, Western found themselves with a defensive zone faceoff which Bulmer stepped in and pulled the puck out of the draw and gained control of the puck at her own blueline and skated the length of the ice, skated hard to the net and chipped the puck high to the blocker side of the Laurier net to give the Mustangs the lead which erupted the capacity crowd in attendance and give Western a 3-2 win.
"The workhorse from Whitehorse is what we call her" said Moxley of Bulmer "With 3-on-3 there is a lot of open ice out there and Rich (Brown, Associate Coach) was calling for us to get her out there, she jumped right out there and scored so it's great to see her have that confidence to be that offensively minded as a defenceman,"
The win is the 9
th of the season for Western and the 4
th overtime victory on the year.
The Mustangs are back on home ice this Saturday afternoon (Jan 13) for a 3:00 pm puck drop against Ontario Tech. Mustang fans can buy their tickets at WesternMustangs.ca/tickets. Western Students get free admission to all regular season on-campus games with their Western ONECard.
