Burt saves the game

BUFFALO, N.Y. ? Talk about your delayed reaction. Make that delayed celebration.
Having already stoned a pair of Canadians in the shootout, Team USA goaltender Katie Burt skated back into her crease prepared to thwart a third.
It wasn’t necessary. Two saves were enough to lift the USA to a 2-1 preliminary-round triumph over its neighbors from the north, at the 2015 International Ice Hockey Federation Under-18 Women’s World Championship, before a standing-room only crowd of 2,000 at HarborCenter.
Burt, the Boston College freshman from Lynn, made 15 saves, many of them of the eye-popping variety.
But it was one she never had to make — that is after she and her teammates realized that they had already won — that left her shaking with excitement.
“I don’t even think it’s hit me yet,” Burt said. “I thought it was a five-player shootout. I didn’t know it was three players. So I was going back out there. I was ready.”
Team USA shooters Jincy Dunne and Abby Roque had both scored to give the U.S. an insurmountable shootout lead.
“I was looking at the refs and said, ‘What’s going on?'” Burt said. “They said, ‘Game’s over.’ So I said, ‘Let’s celebrate.'”
She did, even as she was met by a mob of teammates before she could reach the blue line.
“Katie’s awesome back there,” said Dunne, the team captain. “She’s solid.”
Burt was that and then some, stopping every shot fired at her until Canada’s Sarah Potomak scored at 9:01 of the third to tie the game, 1-1.
Burt didn’t see many shots in the first period, just three, but her first stop, on Christian Higham at 3:45 of the first period, was a doozy.
Not that she would say so.
Potomak roared in on a short-handed breakaway, but as she came to the edge of the crease, Burt stood her ground and turned her away empty handed.
“She (Potomak) was fumbling the puck,” Burt said. “So I thought she was going to shoot. She just whiffed on it.”
Little more than a minute later, at 5:06, Grace Bizal gave Team USA a 1-0 lead.
Stationed near the right circle, Bizal took a crisp rink-wide dish from Caitrin Lonergan and rapped it past Canadian goalie Marlene Boissonnault.
Team USA pressed hard to add to its lead in the second period, but couldn’t convert on a trio of late power-play opportunities.
“We’d like to get more scoring out of our power play,” joked Team USA coach Joe Johnson.
In the third period, Canada pressed hard in search of the tying goal, but was again held at bay by Burt, who stopped Potomak at 6:32 from point blank through a tangle of players.
Less than three minutes later, after Potomak tied the game, Team Canada kept up the pressure, and at 9:17, Burt flashed her glove to rob Lindsay Agnew from 10 feet out.
“To me, (that was) the turning point of the game,” said Johnson. “That save was the difference.”
The game was a rematch of last year’s gold-medal game, in Budapest, when Canada beat the U.S., 5-1.
Team USA will continue its quest for 2015 gold Tuesday, when it will play the Czech Republic. Johnson said he’ll give Burt the day off, and plans to start Brittany Bugalski in net instead.