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Plays Of The Week: Poulin, Howard battle for top spot

Individual effort, milestone games highlight top plays this week

There’s a lot of women’s hockey that deserves to be showcased, and we want to highlight the very best every week.

Each week, we’ll ask for you to send us the top plays you see in women’s hockey, whether they be from college games, pro games, international contests or anything in-between using the hashtag #TIGTop4 (It helps us a lot if you include pictures or GIFs of the play).

From the picks you send us, we’ll select our top four, and then it’s up to you to vote for the best women’s hockey play of the week on our Twitter.

Over 200 of you voted in our first week of #TIGTop4, and it really came down to the wire for the top play. Without further ado, here’s how the voting shook out in our first week:

4. Amanda Pelkey’s shootout goal

The Boston Pride are so ridiculously good that they had never gone to a shootout before. The Buffalo Beauts changed that when they tied the team 1-1 and pushed the game past overtime. The shootout turned into a goalie’s duel, and the stalemate was broken when Amanda Pelkey finally shot the puck five-hole on Brianne McLaughlin for the game-winner. An unlikely hero, perhaps, but the goal is just ridiculous:

3. Sarah Potomak’s OT goal

It hasn’t been an easy season so far for the usually-dominant Minnesota Gophers. They’ve already dropped a game to Bemidji State and it looked like they might lose another one when a tough Minnesota-Duluth team went into the third period leading 2-1 on Saturday night. But Minnesota doesn’t go away that easy- Kelly Pannek scored the tying goal and eventually set up this gorgeous game-winner by Sarah Potomak to give the Gophers the win.

2. Marie-Philip Poulin’s milestone game

Poulin’s play was leading the poll for most of the day, and for good reason- she’s been absolutely dominating the CWHL yet again. She currently leads her team with five points (1G, 4 A) in two games and she hit two milestones in the first weekend of games for Montreal this year: in just her 46th career CWHL game played, she scored her 50th goal and her 100th career point against the Brampton Thunder. Not. Too. Shabby.

1. Brittany Howard’s incredible individual effort

Robert Morris University is turning some heads in the NCAA scene. They’re undefeated so far this season (4-0-2) and part of that is thanks to their incredible top line. One of the players on that line is Brittany Howard, who had this insane goal against Vermont that rocketed to the top of our poll this week, getting 34% of your votes.

Howard’s deke past one defender, then another and remarkable second effort to put her own rebound past the goaltender is an incredible individual effort. We definitely think it’s worthy of our top slot this week.

Think you know what the next best play of the week should be? Tweet us when you see it, and don’t forget to hashtag #TIGTop4.

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