W. Hockey Notebook: Harvard Needs No Special Preparation

New Hampshire coach Brian McCloskey and his team spent hours in practice this past week studying the nuances of the Harvard offense. But it turned out it didn’t matter whether the Wildcats knew exactly where Harvard’s players would be positioned on Friday—they weren’t fast enough to catch the Crimson.

In contrast to No. 5 New Hampshire’s careful scouting, No. 1 Harvard didn’t know any details about the Wildcats’ style of play, its forecheck or power play. It didn’t need to. It just used its skills to blow through every trick New Hampshire tried in the defensive zone en route to the 7-1 victory.

“We didn’t know anything about UNH except that they were 14-1-1, so that was a little bit unnerving,” said Harvard coach Katey Stone.

“But the message we send to our kids is it matters what they do,” Stone added. “Clearly they made the decision today that they were going to dominate completely.”

To prepare for Harvard’s speed on the power play, the Wildcats sought out help from a neighboring locker room—in particular, six New Hampshire men’s players.

The women’s team scrimmaged against the six men’s players in practice last week.

“They’re better than the Harvard girls, so now we’re more alert...on our toes,” Wildcat senior Kristine Butt told the Foster’s Daily Democrat prior to Friday’s game.

Yet despite the creative preparation, New Hampshire crumbled on the penalty kill, where it allowed Harvard its first goals in each of the first two periods.

On the first goal, the Wildcats could not catch freshman Julie Chu in the open ice, and on the second, Jennifer Raimondi and Jennifer Botterill skated circles around them. Sophomore Kat Sweet provided the finish from the crease on each goal.

“Definitely,” said Sweet when asked whether Harvard could execute its power play better than the New Hampshire men, who rank fifth nationally in the polls but just 30th in power-play proficiency.

Harvard continues to lead women’s college hockey with a 37 percent success rate on its power play.

Change of Pace

The final score may not have indicated that New Hampshire had improved over the past year, but Stone—a Wildcat alum herself—was impressed with what she saw in McCloskey’s first season.

During the offseason, New Hampshire did not renew the contract of longtime coach Karen Kay. Once one of the nation’s most dominant hockey programs, New Hampshire had fallen well short of making the national tournament in each of the past three seasons under Kay and lost nine straight to Harvard. Prior to 1999, UNH had never lost to Harvard.

McCloskey appears to have the Wildcats back on track with a 14-1-1 start. Though setbacks to the Crimson and No. 4 Dartmouth this weekend may have brought the Wildcats down to earth, Stone still noticed a vast improvement in their work ethic.

“Tremendous improvement—it’s night and day how hard they play,” Stone said. “Their intensity was there start to finish. Even just in the warmup you could tell they were a really different team from last year. As an alum, that’s really awesome.”

Cast Away

Harvard is already in the position it wanted to be in at this stage of the season with an 11-1 record going into winter break and a No. 1 national ranking.

Stone expects the team to be even better after the break, now that captain Kalen Ingram—who has missed all but two games this season with a broken thumb—is scheduled to have her cast and pins removed today.

“We’ve been doing this without one of our very best players,” Stone said. “We’re anxious to have her back after Christmas, and it’s just going to make things more fun.”

Ingram was one of the three leading returning scorers in the nation during the 2001-02 season. In her last game—a 9-2 thrashing of No. 5 Dartmouth on Nov. 9—Ingram scored a clever goal that put Harvard ahead for good when she deflected a puck off the body of Big Green goaltender Amy Ferguson from an impossible angle on the end line.

With winter break coming up, Ingram now has weeks to prepare for her return. Stone said she’ll work Ingram back into the lineup as quickly and often as she can, though she understands she may have to be eased in.

“We want Kalen in March so we want to make sure we do the right thing with her,” Stone said.

Another implication of Ingram’s return is that the Crimson lines will have to be reshuffled. Prior to her injury, Ingram played on the second line with sophomore Nicole Corriero and junior Lauren McAuliffe. Senior Tracy Catlin moved up from the third line after Ingram’s injury, and junior Mina Pell moved into Catlin’s prior spot when she joined the team at the end of the field hockey season.

Ingram’s return will give Stone more depth than she’s ever had to work with. As a result, there will be plenty of healthy competition within the team and many decisions for Stone to make.

“The makeup of our team changes after Christmas,” Stone said. “How everyone fits into that lineup will be determined by what they prove every day.”

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