Penalties Dominate W. Hockey Season's Start

Each hockey game lasts a full 60 minutes. But as the Harvard women’s hockey team learned this weekend, penalties can drag the game out a lot further.

From the 25 penalties handed out during the Crimson’s game on Friday night against Colgate, players spent 48:02 in the box.

Small wonder, then, that ECAC coaches are already frustrated about the lack of playing time for their non-special teams skaters.

“You practice power play and penalty kill all week and its only certain people,” Colgate coach Scott Wiley said. “You got kids sitting there for 10, 15 minutes at a stretch. But it’s what we asked [the referees] to do.”

What seemed to confuse players and coaches of Harvard and Colgate most on Friday night were penalties called without a clear offender in the action—leaving all 10 on-ice players standing around waiting to see who would be spending the time in the penalty box.

“The hard ones are the sort of ticky-tack ones,” Wiley said, “where nobody knows what the call is until she goes to the box and points to one side of the box or another.”

Nevertheless, the coaches made this decision to tighten up the game and focus on the players’ skill, leading to a new rules emphasis to which all teams will have to adapt.

This rule calls for referees to call the smaller clutch-and-grab tactics in an attempt to reduce traffic and create more open ice and scoring.

For Harvard—as for almost all teams around the country—it means working on becoming flawless on special teams, which will become more important with the increased penalty time.

“It’s really different, but we have to get used to it because it’s not going to change,” said freshman winger Sarah Vaillancourt.

PLAYING BY THE RULES

Since the new rules have increased both the number of power-play and penalty-kill minutes during a game, perfecting special teams operations is crucial to the Crimson’s success this season—and Harvard looked to start off on the right foot this weekend.

“It’s just experience,” Harvard coach Katey Stone said. “Our power play is nowhere near where it needs to be, but it’s good. When you execute and have success, it’s the best way to learn.”

While on Friday night the Crimson struggled on man-up situations—scoring once on eight opportunities—it worked much more efficiently the next day against Cornell, scoring three times on eight power plays and posting seven more shots overall during that time.

In the third period, Harvard went 3-4 on its chances and seemed to come together as a unit. As of now, Harvard’s top line for these opportunities consists of Vaillancourt, tri-captain Nicole Corriero and junior tri-captain Julie Chu, along with winger Jennifer Raimondi and senior Ashley Banfield.

Chu plays back with Banfield.

“We knew coming in that it was going to be a different game,” Raimondi said. “This whole season is going to be a different game. Whatever the situation is, we are going to be ready to go. Hopefully we’ll get better at staying out of the box and learning the system.”

On the penalty kill, Harvard finished the weekend holding its opponents to one for 15—an impressive number that is somewhat counterbalanced by the lackluster offensive display of its opponents.

PLAYING WITH A FULL DECK

This week, Chu and Vaillancourt leave for the American and Canadian national teams, respectively, in order to play for their countries in the Four Nations Cup.

“I was focusing on my two games here, and now I’m focusing on my national team games,” Vaillancourt said. “I just learned that I won’t only be playing against Julie, but I will be playing against Jamie Hagerman, my assistant coach.”

Their absence will take a big chunk out of the Harvard offense, and in the latter stages of Saturday’s game against Cornell, the Crimson seemed to be trying out who it will play with on Wednesday versus Providence.

“We have a lot of depth, especially at forward,” Corriero said. “And we have a lot of players ready to step forward. Other players take it on themselves to step it up.”

From the way the team was mixed up on Saturday—and Corriero’s own speculation—the replacements on the first line will be Raimondi and junior Carrie Schroyer. This line played a bit together on Saturday, but might also be changed based on the return of sophomore Katie Johnston from the soccer team.

With the soccer season over for the women, Johnston will most likely return to the ice today and will play with the team on Wednesday.

Her return will hopefully provide an offensive boost to counteract the loss of Vaillancourt and Chu, but only time can tell.

2:00 MINUTES IN THE PENALTY BOX

Sophomore defenseman Lindsey Weaver, who has not been with the team due to injury, is looking to return today and join Banfield and junior Jennifer Skinner as Harvard’s top players at the back...Saturday’s game was postponed for an hour at the start because the officials were unable to make it to the rink on time. It is the first postponement for the Crimson at home since Nov. 5, 2000, when Harvard’s two zambonis caught on fire and spewed smoke onto the rink.

—Staff writer Gabriel M. Velez can be reached at gmvelez@fas.harvard.edu.