Rookie standout Lexie Laing is carrying on the household legacy with the NWHL’s Boston Satisfaction

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Her two older sisters, Brianna and Denna, have pulled on the Satisfaction jersey previously, however the youngest of the Laing siblings is making her personal distinct mark on the NWHL.Lexie Laing|Michelle Jay/NWHLWhen requested about her lineage within the NWHL, Lexie Laing has a quip on the prepared, the joke proper on the tip of her tongue. The youngest of the Laing sisters, the 24-year-old sibling of former Boston Satisfaction goaltender Brianna Laing and ahead Denna Laing, Lexie factors out that not solely does the 2019-20 marketing campaign mark the third season during which one of many Laings has suited up for the Satisfaction, it makes it so that each one three have performed within the odd years. Denna performed in Yr One of many NWHL, Brianna in Yr Three and Lexie made her debut this season, Yr 5.
“Oh, you assume you may eliminate a Laing,” Lexie mentioned. “However then you definitely get one proper again the subsequent 12 months. We simply don’t go away.”
Truth of the matter, although, is the Satisfaction would have it no different manner. That’s significantly true with the best way the youngest Laing has carried out all through the primary 18 video games of her profession.
After captaining Harvard in her ultimate collegiate marketing campaign and posting a career-best eight objectives and 26 factors for the Crimson final season, Laing has come into the NWHL and slotted into the center of the Satisfaction lineup with out lacking a lot as a step. On an offensively overpowering Boston workforce – the Satisfaction have a league-high 63 objectives, 33 greater than the next-highest scoring outfit – Laing has been constant in her manufacturing. Her 11 objectives put her in a tie for third on the Satisfaction and sixth within the NWHL. Her 23 factors are greater than all however two of her teammates and three gamers within the circuit.
“Tori (Sullivan) and Carlee (Toews), my two linemates, are each enormous components as a result of they’re each nice gamers,” Laing mentioned about her offensive output this season. “I believe proper from the second they put us collectively, we clicked rather well. We have now an perspective of, ‘Let’s simply go on the market and play. If we rating, who cares. That’d be nice.’…That’s refreshing. We don’t really feel a stress to provide, so it’s type of been good as a result of that’s been what’s taking place for our line.”
Laing did acknowledge that there’s extra to the road’s manufacturing than their laidback method, nonetheless, noting the speed-first mentality all three possess and the unselfish mentality with which they play. That spreads defenders and opens capturing lanes. It additionally hasn’t harm that the Satisfaction’s high line – Jillian Dempsey, McKenna Model and Christina Putigna – takes some consideration away from the second unit, however Laing is fast to level out that your complete Satisfaction lineup can merely overwhelm opposing defenses.
“We’re not thought of a one-two punch. It’s a relentless. We’re at all times attacking,” Laing mentioned. “There’s not a line on our workforce that’s the ‘simpler line.’ We’re consistently attacking, pressuring the opposite workforce.”
That’s been key in serving to the Satisfaction run roughshod over the remainder of the league. Final weekend’s defeat of the Connecticut Whale gave Boston an ideal 18-Zero-Zero document and the longest profitable streak in NWHL historical past. And fittingly, the record-setting victory got here on “Denna Day,” the annual outing during which the Satisfaction honor and fundraise for the eldest of the Laing sisters, who suffered a tragic spinal twine damage whereas enjoying for the Satisfaction throughout a 2015 inter-league outside recreation in opposition to the CWHL’s Les Canadiennes de Montreal.
For Lexie, who scored in late within the first body of the weekend win, her large sister’s presence on “Denna Day” is telling about what she means to the league and to the Satisfaction. “I simply assume it speaks rather a lot to the Satisfaction group that she’s nonetheless concerned 12 months after 12 months,” Laing mentioned. “It’s not, ‘Oh, yeah, it is a factor that occurred,’ and neglect about it years later. They make a aware effort to carry (Denna) into every little thing they do.”
And by every little thing, Laing means every little thing. Denna has been across the workforce all through the season, at practices and at video games and at workforce occasions. In a way, it has supplied the youngest and the oldest Laing sister with a first-of-its-kind expertise. “As a result of now we have such an enormous age hole, I’ve by no means been on a workforce enjoying together with her,” Laing mentioned. “That’s one thing we’d at all times stay up for throughout summers once we would go to my dad’s summer season camp. It’s positively particular for me…It’s cool to see how she leads and conjures up different individuals on my workforce.”
The help of her sister, in addition to the on- and off-ice help of the Satisfaction gamers round her, has additionally helped propel the NWHL’s newest Laing into one other expertise that shall be a primary – not only for herself, but additionally for the three Laings who’ve come by way of the league.
When the league introduced its all-star alternatives earlier this month, Laing discovered herself scooped as much as be part of Staff Dempsey and one of many Satisfaction’s league-high eight alternatives. It’s the primary time one of many three Laing sisters will seem on an NWHL all-star squad, and it’s all of the extra becoming Laing will accomplish that in entrance of family and friends when the weekend’s occasions happen on Feb. Eight-9 at Boston’s Warrior Ice Enviornment, house of the Satisfaction.
“It’s a significant honor,” she mentioned. “I didn’t actually count on it, to be trustworthy. I believe it simply made me acknowledge that each one the onerous work that I’m placing in throughout practices and in video games, displaying up on daily basis, is unquestionably working.”
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Tags: girls’s hockey, nwhlConnect: Concerning the AuthorJared ClintonJared Clinton is a author and internet editor with The Hockey Information. He is been with the workforce since 2014. He was born, raised and resides in Winnipeg, the place he will be discovered lacking the web on outside rinks throughout city.