W. Hockey Obliterates Depleted Dartmouth

HANOVER, N.H.—Featuring a never-ceasing attack that led to 22 goals from 11 different players, the Harvard women’s hockey opened its season with its most prolific weekend of offense in school history.

Coming off a 13-0 victory over Vermont on Saturday, the No. 3 Crimson stunned longtime nemesis Dartmouth in a 9-2 victory in front of a thousand-strong hostile crowd in Hanover. The nine goals were more than Harvard had ever scored against Dartmouth and the most scored by any Dartmouth opponent since 1986. Dartmouth was also held to just nine shots.

Harvard had won just two of its last 10 meetings with Dartmouth and had scored just one victory at Dartmouth since 1990. The Big Green had knocked Harvard out of the ECAC tournament three years in a row.

But a depleted Dartmouth roster was no match for a stacked Harvard team. The weekend that marked the first collegiate action for captains Jennifer Botterill and Angela Ruggiero since returning from their respective national programs also marked the departure of three Dartmouth forwards to the Canadian national program for the Four Nations Cup.

“We can’t take anything for granted because they were missing some of their players, but anytime you win by that big of a margin, especially against a team so good, we’re happy and smiling a lot,” Ruggiero said.

Though Dartmouth was missing a whole forward line, it still had its blueliners and top goalkeeper. Dartmouth netminder Amy Ferguson, who held the 2000 Harvard team to two goals as a freshman and the 2001 Harvard team to one goal as a sophomore, was made to look shockingly mortal by the Crimson’s rapid-fire attack.

“I think in the past we’ve had trouble [with Ferguson] because we haven’t shot the puck,” Harvard coach Katey Stone said. “Good things happen no matter who the goalie is when you shoot the puck. Take nothing away from her. I just think we were buzzing today.”

Dartmouth coach Judy Parish Oberting chose not to speculate what her missing line would have done to change the result.

“We’ll see next time we play them,” she said.

One notable achievement of the weekend came against Vermont. Botterill matched the Harvard single-game point record with nine and broke the single-game assist mark with seven. For a player like Botterilll, the records were just another footnote in a storied career.

Harvard 9, Dartmouth 2

Just two games into the season, Stone told her team to play like it was eight games into the schedule—the motivation being that next weekend’s opponents, No. 1 Minnesota-Duluth and No. 2 Minnesota, had played that many games. The result on the ice was a team playing in late-season form.

Harvard dominated possession of the puck from the opening whistle and outshot the Big Green 34-9.

Sophomore Kat Sweet, the third player on the Botterill-Julie Chu line, led all scorers with two goals and two assists. Sweet’s play in the second period is what turned the game from a close 2-1 affair to a blowout.

Two minutes into the second period on the power play, Sweet perfectly deflected a Ruggiero shot from the point past Ferguson. Within the next minute, Sweet took the puck into the zone, and with a slight fake she caught Ferguson off guard and slipped the puck past her.

Then, for Harvard’s sixth goal, Sweet entered the zone with Botterill, drew two defenders as she made like she was going to shoot, then set up Botterill for the open shot.

Harvard’s fifth goal was scored by captain Jamie Hagerman on a screen shot from the blue line.

Dartmouth scored in the final minute of the second period to cut the lead to 6-2. Knowing all too well the Big Green’s ability to comeback, Harvard looked to ice the game early.

Thanks to Sweet and sophomore Nicole Corriero, it did. Sweet came up the left side within a minute of the third period and passed off to Corriero, who fired home the open shot.

Botterill and freshman Jennifer Raimondi each scored in the third as well to round out the scoring and the 9-2 win.

“Even though we were winning by such a large margin at the end, everyone was working hard at the end,” Ruggiero said.

The Big Green could sustain no offense beyond cherry-picking, which seemed to be a feasible strategy at the outset, when freshman Katherine Weatherston got behind the defense and scored on a breakaway to go up 1-0.

Harvard scored two goals within a minute apart to take the lead quickly.

Ruggiero scored on a shot from the point on the power play as Botterill distracted Ferguson in front. Then, 33 second later, captain Kalen Ingram scored on a clever, impossibly angled shot from the end line that deflected off Ferguson into the net.

Junior goalkeeper Jessica Ruddock stopped seven of nine shots in net for the victory. Both goals she allowed came on breakaways.

Harvard’s power play was unstoppable as it scored on its first three chances. The power play’s 66 percent success rate is the nation’s best. Harvard had the best power play in the nation last season even without the Olympians.

Harvard 13, Vermont 0

As expected, the Catamounts didn’t put up much of a fight. Harvard led 7-0 after just one period, by which time Chu had also already netted a hat trick.

Harvard scored four in the second and two in the third for the victory. Nicole Corriero also had a hat trick. Sophomore Kat Sweet had a goal and four assists.

Botterill’s nine-point effort tied the school record set by Tammy Shewchuk ’00-’01. The seven assists broke a school record shared by herself and A.J. Mleczko ’97-’99.

—Staff writer David R. De Remer can be reached at remer@fas.harvard.edu.