W. Hockey Tops Maine, No. 6 UNH

The Harvard women’s hockey team entered its longest break of the season on Dec. 16 with its longest winning streak of the season.

Following its 3-1 victory over Connecticut on Dec. 12, the Crimson (8-6-1) earned one of its biggest wins of the year on Dec. 14 with a 4-3 victory at then-No. 6 New Hampshire (11-4-1) on the strength of three power-play goals from junior center Kalen Ingram. Against Maine (7-8-1) on Dec. 16, Ingram assisted on all three Harvard goals in a 3-2 victory.

The win streak upped Harvard’s national ranking to No. 7.

Freshman winger Nicole Corriero scored in each game to up her goal-scoring streak to seven games. She leads the nation in points, goal-scoring, and goals-per-game with 18 goals and 10 assists. Ingram leads the nation in assists-per-game with 17 in 15 contests.

Now the challenge for the Crimson will be to carry the momentum from its recent success through the light portion of its schedule. Harvard has just two official games left before Feb. 1—at Princeton on Jan. 11 and at Yale on Jan. 12. Harvard Coach Katey Stone stressed to the team the importance of staying focused and in shape throughout the lighter portion of the schedule.

“Right now we’re probably in the best shape we’re going to be in all season just because we’ve been playing so much,” said junior captain Jaime Hagerman. “We really don’t want to lose that edge that we’ve had these last few games.”

The break was much-needed as Harvard played a busy schedule over the first two weeks of December.

“This is a perfect time for a break having played eight games in 16 days,” Hagerman said. “People have been killing themselves.”

Harvard 3, Maine 2

The Crimson went up 3-0 after two periods against the Black Bears and then held on despite being outshot 18-3 in the third period.

Three straight wins wasn’t the only streak kept alive against the Black Bears (7-8-1). The victory was Harvard’s seventh in as many tries against Maine in series history. The Crimson also scored twice on the man advantage for the third consecutive game.

Harvard’s first goal came just 2:28 into the game. The opportunity was created when Ingram won the puck down low on the forecheck. Hagerman, seeing that Ingram had no angle to shoot, skated into the zone to give Ingram another option. Ingram put the puck right on Hagerman’s stick, and Hagerman found the back of the net for a 1-0 lead.

That score would hold until the 4:07 mark of the second period when the Crimson struck for a power-play goal thanks to textbook execution. The Maine penalty kill played into the Crimson’s hands by keying in on Corriero during the power play. When Corriero received the puck at the left boards, she snapped it across ice to Ingram, who immediately found junior forward Tracy Catlin wide open on the left side of the net for the finish.

“No one was on [Catlin],” Hagerman said. “Everyone was paying attention to Nicole as the scoring threat.”

Corriero justified Maine’s vigilance when she received the puck on a Harvard power play with 8:18 left in the second period. She single-handedly beat two Maine defenders and unleashed from the top of the crease. Maine goaltender Lara Smart made the initial save, but Corriero scored on her own rebound.

“It was just Nicole working her magic,” Hagerman said.

With 17 goals in 55 opportunities (30.9 percent), Harvard now has the most proficient power play in the nation. That’s a better proficiency than last season when the Crimson also led the nation with 28 goals in 116 opportunities (24.1 percent).

“One of the great things about this program is that we’ve had the same power play for years,” Hagerman said. “Last year we had Tammy [Shewchuk ’00-’01] and Jen [Botterill ’01-’02] running the show, but we take them out, and put new people in. It’s the same setup, just new personnel.”

What’s astonishing is that Harvard has achieved greater power-play proficiency this season without the 2002 Canadian Olympians Botterill and Shewchuk.

“We’re very young, and I think sometimes kids look left, look right, and see that Botterill’s not there, Shewchuk’s not there, or [Angie] Francisco [’01]—any of those kids,” Stone said. “So they learn that they have to do it themselves.”

While the power-play success was a positive that afternoon, one of the negatives was that for the third straight game, Harvard allowed a team to cut a two-goal deficit to one in the final four minutes. The Crimson has also allowed goals inside the final four minutes in each of its last five games.

Maine made the game close again as Meagan Aarts scored her 11th and 12th goals of the season, the first goal coming 6:09 into the third, and the second goal coming with 1:25 left in regulation after Smart had been pulled for an extra skater.

Maine outshot Harvard 28-20 but sophomore goaltender Jessica Ruddock made that deficit irrelevant with 26 saves, including 16 in the third period alone. Harvard’s lead was threatened in the first period when the Black Bears earned a couple breakaways by splitting Crimson defenders, but Ruddock kept them off the scoreboard.

The Maine game was Harvard’s last nonconference game of the season outside of the Beanpot.

Harvard 4, UNH 3

DURHAM, N.H.—Ingram’s hat trick of three similar power-play goals was the difference as Harvard survived an emotionally wrenching game marred by freshman Nicole Corriero’s scary second-period collision into the rear boards and UNH’s fiery third-period rally.

“[Ingram] put herself in the right spot three times on our power play. That kid was awesome. She gets better every single game. I said from the day she got here three years ago, she’s the smartest player I’ve ever had,” Stone said.

Harvard has now beaten UNH nine consecutive times since the national championship season of 1999, when the Crimson swept the Wildcats in the regular season and beat them in overtime of the ECAC and AWCHA championship games. Harvard was 0-22-1 against UNH prior to that year.

Ingram thought that Harvard goaltender Alison Kuusisto deserved more credit for the victory than she did. On the strength of Kuusisto’s career-high matching 38 saves, the Crimson won the game despite being outshot 41-28.

“Our goalie kept us in there in the second period when we were dead,” Ingram said. “She made some big saves and that’s what we needed, because we have a young team and sometimes it takes a little longer to figure things out. She was the No. 1 star for us [on Friday].”

On each of Ingram’s three power-play goals, Crimson defenseman Pamela Van Reesema set her up in front from the left point.

On the first goal, which came just 3:16 into the game, Van Reesema’s shot hung at the top of the crease, and as New Hampshire goaltender Jen Huggon moved out of position to play it, Ingram put it past her.

For the second goal—which came at 9:54 of the first—Harvard center Lauren McAuliffe got the initial deflection, but the puck came right back to Ingram as Huggon was taken out of the play. Ingram then calmly skated out of traffic and backhanded the puck into the open net.

Ingram completed the hat trick with a deflection from the top of the crease just 2:08 into the third period.

She was surprised that UNH left her so uncovered all night.

“They play a box, and they just stick to the box, and we recognized that,” Ingram said. “Normally I just play on the wing there, and coming in no one would pick me up.”

Ingram had scored just two goals this season entering the night, but she more than doubled her season total in one game. Although her goal-scoring numbers have been down this season, she had been leading the nation in assists-per-game with 14 in 11 contests entering this week.

Despite falling behind 2-0 and 4-1, UNH stayed in the game. A major turning point came with 5:30 left in the second period, when Wildcat center Debbie Bernhard hit Corriero from behind. The collision caused Corriero, who had already been down on the ice, to hit the rear boards head-first.

Corriero felt a surge of pain in her neck and cried out, then remained motionless on the ice for nearly five minutes.

“I just was really scared because you hear about all those freak stories where people hit their heads and they never walk again,” Corriero said.

Corriero did come back to play in the third period. She sweetened her evening and kept her six-game goal-scoring streak alive by scoring on a quick, deceptive wrister that snuck past Huggon inside the left post at the 7:38 mark.

The game disqualification charged to Bernhard for her hit on Corriero set the Crimson off on a five-minute power play. But Harvard wasted the opportunity when Crimson center Tracy Catlin was called for a hitting-from-behind minor penalty just 15 seconds later. The Wildcats then capitalized on the four-on-four with under four minutes left in the period, as UNH winger Jaime VanMassenhove beat Kuusisto top-shelf on a breakaway.

The Wildcats killed the rest of the penalty.

Harvard began to wear down in the final minutes of the second, due largely to its short roster and the Olympic-sized ice surface its skaters had to cover. But the Crimson bounced back in the third as the Ingram and Corriero goals put Harvard up 4-1.

“At the end of the second period, I think we were holding on hoping that we weren’t going to lose,” Stone said. “In the third period we went to win, and that’s what turned it around for us.”

UNH cut the deficit to two on a power play when UNH freshman winger Steph Jones found the net after winning a loose puck in traffic at the 9:25 mark. Winger Annie Fahlenbrock then made the score 4-3 on a deflection that snuck inside the right post with 3:29 left in regulation.

UNH kept the pressure on in the final minutes, but couldn’t find the game-tying goal. Harvard was just as unlucky on its attempts for an insurance goal, as Corriero hit a post on an empty net, and a McAuliffe shot went wide down the stretch.

Like the Dec. 12 game against Connecticut and the 3-2 loss to Minnesota on Nov. 18, Harvard had a two-goal lead cut to one in the final minutes. But like the UConn win and unlike the Minnesota loss, Harvard persevered.

“We knew what we didn’t want to happen,” Hagerman said. “So we just worked on good defense, keeping it down low, and minimizing our mistakes.”

UNH Coach Karen Kay considered the game just as winnable as her team’s losses to unranked Connecticut and Providence in the past two weeks.

“I think we’re a better team than Harvard. Not to take anything away—they won the game. But I think we’re a better team,” Kay said.