Women's Hockey Rips No. 11 Brown, 4-0

Entering the second prolonged hiatus of its season, Harvard continued its recent winning streak at the expense of rival Brown.

The Crimson (10-6-1, 9-1-0 ECAC) used a quick start and commanding special teams to topple the Bears (10-6-1, 7-5-0) 4-0, dispatching its third straight conference foe in efficient fashion.

The majority of the scoring, as usual, came from the first line, as tri-captain Nicole Corriero registered two goals and an assist, junior center Julie Chu contributed three assists and freshman Sarah Vaillancourt added a goal and an assist.

But the game-clinching tally came from an unlikely source—junior Carrie Schroyer—whose third goal of the season stifled a second-period Brown surge and extended the lead to an insurmountable three-goal advantage.

“We talked in the locker room before the game about taking individual responsibility,” Schroyer said, “and really trying to have each person step up and push ourselves to spread those goals out over the lines.”

After a Lindsay Weaver pass eluded sophomore Jennifer Sifers, Schroyer gathered the puck, swooped across the goal mouth from right to left, and beat Bears goalie Stacy Silverman on the near post with a backhand flip.

The opening period provided much of the fireworks as Harvard grabbed a quick 2-0 advantage and set the tone with its attacking play. The Crimson first got on the board halfway through the frame with a little help from the statistically stingy Brown defense.

Coming into the game, the Bears back line had allowed only 25 goals in 16 games, placing them fifth nationally in scoring defense.

This time, though, Brown defender Myria Heinhuis could not get out of the way of the puck when a centering pass from Corriero found Heinhuis’s skate and slid into the net. Corriero was credited with her team-leading 27th goal of the season.

“I’ve learned that, when in doubt, just throw it on net and anything can happen,” Corriero said.

She followed that up with her 28th two minutes later, this time on a serendipitous rebound.

After a face-off at the Brown end, Julie Chu corralled the puck and weaved unmarked through the Bears defense, banging a shot off the right post. The rebound angled out to the feet of Corriero and Vaillancourt in the middle of the crease, with Corriero finally pushing it home.

Coming off of a stretch of grueling workouts, the beneficial effects of conditioning were clearly visible as the game went on.

“We’re playing some inspired hockey right now,” Harvard coach Katey Stone said. “We’re more efficient, we’re hard working and those are the cornerstones of our program. We’ve got a little bit of an edge to us and I like it.”

Harvard was the faster and more energetic side throughout the contest, seizing nearly every loose puck and turning in impressive numbers on its penalty kills.

The Crimson faced seven Brown power plays, and turned them all away, including a 65-second stretch of five-on-three skating at the end of the first period in which Brown scarcely threatened. A key component of the unit was junior goalkeeper Ali Boe, who posted her fourth shutout of the season and wound up with 26 saves.

The flip side of that coin was the Harvard power play squaring off against the Brown penalty kill, ranked first in all of Division I at the start of the game. The top power-play unit, though, was able to find the chinks in the Bears armor, converting two power-play chances out of six.

“A difference about our power play from other power plays may be that we really try to move the puck,” Corriero said. “I think we were able to expose that we had five players and they have four, just by moving the puck and finding those seams.”

That included the final score, which pushed the lead to 4-0 with 10:56 remaining in the game. On that play, Vaillancourt knocked in a neat one-timer off a feed from Corriero, her 12th goal of the season.

The Crimson will now embark on a 17-day layoff for exams, hoping to return from that break as energized as it did from the holiday vacation—after which it has won three straight.

When the team returns, they will be thrust back into the thick of the conference schedule, with home meetings against Princeton and Yale on January 28th and 29th.

—Staff writer Jonathan Lehman can be reached at jlehman@fas.harvard.edu.