Some teams live and die by their top forward line. Their best attackers suffer through long, frequent shifts due to a lack of talent, chemistry and trust in the team’s depth.

Not so for Syracuse. The second, or green, line of Shiann Darkangelo, Laurie Kingsbury and Melissa Piacentini has actually outscored the team’s first-shift attack in full-strength play. When head coach Paul Flanagan talks about his second-liners he consistently comes back to one word: dynamic.

“That green line, it’s dynamic,” Flanagan said. “If Laurie Kingsbury goes down the wall they either got to — she’s either going to get by them or they got to take a penalty; they can’t stop her.”

But SU’s second forward line is built around more than Kingsbury’s physical dominance. The lefty Darkangelo skates the middle of the ice where she has a natural passing lane to connect with Kingsbury on the left wing. Meanwhile the 5-foot-2-inch Piacentini — Kingsbury is 5 feet 10 inches tall and Darkangelo is 5 feet 9 inches tall — slips into dangerous positions on the break as well as a set offense. Her forechecks pester, creating chaos and preventing opponents from exposing the Orange (3-3, 2-0 College Hockey America) on line changes.

The linemates take time for each other away from hockey too. Over regularly shared meals and similar personalities they sharpen their chemistry on the ice.

“They always give advice and they’re always looking out for teammates,” Piacentini said.

Piacentini more than holds her own, and the towering Kingsbury hardly hesitates to join dead-puck skirmishes.

The line is constantly talking about what shots to take and passes to make, yet a collective innate vision for the game chiefly binds the unit together.

“I think there’s just good chemistry and we can read off of each other, and when one of us goes the other can kind of — and (Piacentini) she has a good sense of the ice, so she can also read out for both of us,” Darkangelo said.

Early season games can be marred by missed connections, sloppy passes and disjointed play. But when Syracuse’s green line takes the ice, this simply is not the case. Both Northeastern and Quinnipiac skated their featured lines for heavy minutes, while the Orange switched between its top two to keep the team fresh.

A 4-0 first-period shellacking by NU largely put the game out of reach, but SU won the final two periods 2-1 against a heavy-legged squad. After falling to Quinnipiac 4-3 in overtime on Friday, the Orange made the Bobcats pay for their over-reliance on the top line featuring leading scorer Kelly Babstock.

“It obviously gives you that kind of one-two punch that maybe we haven’t had in the past, so we can have that second line come out and be able to be every bit as good or better on certain nights than the first line,” Flangan said. “Obviously teams have to adjust to that and they have to take note that obviously we’re not just a one-line team.”

SU has scored 21 goals this season. The green line has scored 10 of them. The group scored four goals last weekend, and all but one of them was assisted by a linemate.

The line also represents the future of Orange hockey. Kingsbury and Piacentini are freshmen and Darkangelo is a sophomore. Off the ice, the trio is generally laid back. Energetic, but relaxed. When they walk through the doors of Tennity Ice Pavilion, they enter pregame mode. And when they take the ice they are an all-action blur.

There’s an added degree of abandon in the green line’s play. Whether it’s in physical altercations, fast breaks or simply the way the players skate, it’s changing the 5-year-old program.

“A lot of girls talk about the history of the program, the ones that have been here for a long time and just how when they started it was a new program and teams kind of looked at them like ‘Oh they’re Syracuse,’” Piacentini said. “But now I think the older kids are teaching the younger kids that they want to transform the program into like ‘Oh, it’s Syracuse, this is a big game.’”

Published on October 23, 2012 at 11:35 pm

Contact Jacob: jmklinge@syr.edu | @Jacob_Klinger_