W. Hockey Rallies to Salvage Tie With Saints

The Harvard women’s hockey team’s first game at No. 6 St. Lawrence on Friday was an uncharacteristic struggle.

The Crimson’s prolific first line was silenced entirely as the Harvard forecheck let up one odd-man rush after another. Harvard trailed after a period, regained the lead in the second, and then abruptly surrendered it again in the third.

Yet through it all the No. 1 Crimson still escaped with a 3-3 tie that ended a 17-game win streak but kept an 18-game unbeaten streak alive.

“You learn a lot from those tough game situations and adversity,” said Harvard captain Jennifer Botterill. “We came back, came from behind, and never gave up. We truly believed we were going to win that game on Friday night.”

On an evening when Harvard felt none of the bounces were going its way, one finally did with just over three minutes left to play.

The second line was on the ice, fighting desperately to come back from a 3-2 deficit. As sophomore Nicole Corriero carried the puck down the right wing, she heard captain Kalen Ingram calling for a pass in front, and she sent the puck across.

Corriero’s pass never reached Ingram. Instead, it deflected off the shoulder of St. Lawrence goaltender Rachel Barrie and into the net.

“When I originally threw it out in front I was hoping to hit Kalen for the tip, but it was a little too close to the net,” Corriero said. “So it ended up going in—I was happy with that.”

Once the game was tied 3-3, the two goaltenders—the Saints’ Barrie and Harvard junior Jessica Ruddock—let nothing else pass.

“We had great chances, and they had some great shots too, but we really thought that we were going to bury it the last few minutes of regulation and overtime,” Botterill said. “Right down to the last few seconds in overtime we had a great chance, but the puck just wasn’t going in for us that night.”

Ruddock has rarely seen more than 20 shots in a game this year, but on Friday she faced one two-on-one after another. She needed to perform, and she did.

In a late second period two-on-one, Canadian national team member Gina Kingsbury was set up with a pass across the crease, and Ruddock busted across the net for the save that preserved a 2-1 Harvard lead.

Her biggest save came with just eight seconds left in regulation when she stuffed the Saints’ Lindsay Charlebois, who had broken free off a two-on-one. Ruddock said that letting St. Lawrence win on that shot was simply not an option.

“From my perspective, there’s no choice in a game that close,” Ruddock said. “You have to make that save.”

“We couldn’t have asked more from her,” captain Angela Ruggiero said of Ruddock. “She stood on her head.”

Ruddock credited her teammates for elevating her own performance a notch.

“I was inspired by my team this weekend, because St. Lawrence was really rough and just pounding our forwards,” Ruddock said. “Our ‘D’ was trying to adjust but struggling a bit on Friday, and I just have to do my part.”

St. Lawrence accomplished the rare feat of breaking through Harvard’s forecheck with enough regularity to force the Crimson into its defensive zone. The Saints made Harvard pay 5:26 into the first period when top scorer Shannon Smith scored after being left unmarked in front of the net. That led to a 1-0 deficit at the intermission—the first time Harvard had not been leading after the first period all season.

Harvard’s penalty kill was solid as usual—in fact, it outshot the Saints’ power play for the evening. Botterill tied the game just 12 seconds after a St. Lawrence man advantage ended when she beat Barrie five-hole to cap a great individual effort.

The Crimson took its only lead in the last two minutes of the second period, when Corriero plucked the puck from the point in the Harvard defensive zone and broke in on a two-on-none with Ingram. Corriero made the well-timed pass, and Ingram tipped the puck into the high corner on her backhand for the finish.

The second line’s first two shifts in the third period weren’t nearly as fruitful. On each, Harvard came close to scoring, but St. Lawrence broke in the other direction. In just four minutes, the Saints turned a 2-1 deficit into a 3-2 lead. When Corriero tied the game later in the third, she said it was a moment of redemption.

Other than Botterill’s goal with the penalty kill unit, no one on Harvard’s first line found the back of the net, and Chu was held without a point for the first time in her college career. Ruggiero said St. Lawrence stopped Harvard largely by keeping its forwards down low, leaving the points open and then blocking the shots from the point to prevent any tips.

Ruddock said an additional factor in the Saints’ ability to shut down the first line was that they were literally hanging off the backs of Crimson players. Nevertheless, St. Lawrence was called for just two penalties the entire game, and Harvard did what it could to work around that.

“We knew going into it there are things you can control and things that you can’t,” said junior Lauren McAuliffe, a winger on the first line. “We followed through and tried to control the aspects that we could. It didn’t work out perfectly, but we realized we weren’t going to get any breaks.”

Harvard’s game on Friday was not its most consistent, but the team learned from it and showed immediate improvement the next day.

“As much as we want to respect every opponent, we learned there’s no holding back on anybody,” Ruddock said. “We didn’t consciously hold back on Friday, but we learned that from here on out for the rest of the season we have to go full blast every game.”

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