Allie Kelley Steals The Show in Syracuse Women’s Ice Hockey 2-1 Loss to Merrimack

By Andrew Della Piana | @dellie_5

Marvelous. Spectacular. Incredible. There aren’t enough words in the English dictionary to describe Allie Kelley’s performance tonight. The St. Anselm transfer made 56 saves in her first game dawning the orange and blue at Tennity Ice Pavilion. While Syracuse dropped its first game of the season in a 2-1 loss to Merrimack, head coach Britni Smith was still very pleased by how her goaltender played. 

“Extremely impressive. We talk about our game being battle and compete and that’s all six on the ice. She did a fantastic job keeping us in that game, giving us an opportunity at the end to put one in and force overtime. We just talked in the locker room and huge kudos to her.”

“Honestly at St. A’s I got the same shot count there. So, kind of used to that. But, give credit to Merrimack, they played a great game and got two by me today unfortunately,” said Kelley. 

“These are nights where we’re going to need her. She really battled for us and kept us in the game the whole time. Being able to have her back there and trusting that she can do her job and giving us every opportunity to do ours, I think is a real blessing. We’re very grateful to have her back there holding us in it,” said Sarah Thompson. 

The graduate student finished just 2 stops shy of a career-high, which was set at 58 back in 2022. In terms of SU history, Kelley’s performance surpassed Arielle DeSmet’s 54 against Penn State just last year. SU’s netminder hopes to bounce back and hopes to see her team even further when Syarcuse takes on Merrimack at 3:00 o’clock tomorrow.

aedellap@syr.edu | @dellie_5