Harvard Triumphs Despite Love's Superhuman Effort

She wowed the crowd all afternoon and even brought the opposing fans to their feet in applause. She had Harvard skaters striking the ice with their sticks in frustration. She had her teammates knocking her pads in recognition for posting amazing save after save all game long, totaling 45 on the afternoon.

All goalie Sarah Love needed to send Yale into overtime was number 46. And the way the game had played out all afternoon, it wasn’t the last thing on anyone’s mind.

The Crimson—which outshot the Bulldogs by 26—had many more near-goals than the Elis could boast. Time after time, Harvard generated quality offensive flurries, but time after time Love came up big with a save.

“She’s big. She’s a really good first-shot goaltender. And then she finds the puck—she’s very sticky,” said Harvard coach Katey Stone. “One shot, you don’t really get a second chance, third chance, generally.”

The Crimson tried everything. Because Yale played co-captain Angela Ruggiero high, she floated in and out from in front of the goal, trying to generate whatever offense she could.

“I was being covered so we couldn’t utilize the normal tic-tac-toe passing. We sort of had to figure out a way to work around it,” Ruggiero said.

Still deadlocked at nil in the third period, Harvard generated more quality offensive sequences, keeping the crowd in suspense on every drive down ice.

One of those quality chances occurred midway through the third period while Yale was on the power play. Harvard dumped the puck in on the left side of the goal and Love emerged from her lair to handle the puck.

She hesitated for a moment, searching for a teammate to pass to. Freshman Jennifer Sifers seized the window of opportunity.

“I tried to beat her defenseman to the puck, picked it up and had a foot race to the net with [Love],” Sifers said. “I took the near post and she slid across the net and got a pad on it. The puck bounced around the crease until a Yale player shot it into the corner.”

Sifers was left sprawled on the ice beside Love, pondering what could have been a goal.

“I couldn’t believe she made the save, but that’s what she did all day,” Sifers said.

Later on, with just under five minutes left to play, freshman Katie Johnston—a former teammate of Love’s on Team Ontario—deflected a shot from classmate Caitlin Cahow which beat Love but hit the crossbar and flew back out into play.

Nothing headed anywhere near the direction of the pipes seemed to have any chance of going in, no matter how good the shot. In short, Yale’s goalie played like an epidemic waiting to break loose.

But the Crimson finally found a potent cure for her sick play bottled up in Love Potion No. 9.

The concoction was a dot-to-dot set-up, starting with Harvard’s staple of offensive dependency Ruggiero, who fired the puck to the right post where Julie Chu stood waiting.

Chu knocked the puck at Love—save number 45—when the puck made its way across the crease to the left side of the net, where No. 9 Nicole Corriero stood hunched, ready to take her ninth shot of the game on Harvard’s ninth power play advantage.

“They always say it’s not when you’re missing the chances that you should worry; it’s when you’re not getting the chances, getting the shots,” Corriero said.

Corriero backhanded the puck airborne as Love shifted to her right—but for once, too late.

Save number 46 was the one that got away.

Though a mere murmur in what had been Love’s muting of the second-best offense in the nation—the Crimson averages 4.43 goals per game—Corriero’s goal with seven seconds remaining sent the Bright Hockey Center fans into a raucous roar.

As Harvard celebrated amid the cheers, the Yale netminder stood in disbelief.

Seven seconds later and one more loss added to her record, Love—who had withstood trial after trial all game long, who had single-handedly kept her team tied with the No. 3 team in the nation for nearly three periods—stood with her stick by her side, her left arm resting atop the goal for support, utterly dejected.

Her teammates surrounded her, each taking turns patting her shoulder or helmet on a job well done.

In the ceremonial on-ice hand-shaking after the game, each Crimson skater acknowledged Love’s effort—an effort that, however valiant, fell seven seconds short.

—Staff writer John R. Hein can be reached at hein@fas.harvard.edu.