Senior Plays Like a Leader

There are five seconds left.

Princeton is on the power play, down by one, and has earned a faceoff in the Harvard zone.

Senior Jennifer Raimondi speaks up on the bench. She wants to take the draw.

The puck is dropped, and Raimondi wins it cleanly. The final seconds tick off the clock, and the Crimson seal an important early-season conference win.

“I had the confidence going in to say, ‘Okay, I want that puck to be dropped to me,’” Raimondi said. “That’s why we’re here. Those are the spots we want to be in—five seconds left, I want to be taking that draw.”

On a team that lost five seniors to graduation and three standouts to national teams and replaced the departures with eight freshmen, there is some doubt as to who will fill the leadership void. With stand-up plays like the late face-off, Raimondi is helping to quell those doubts.

“She’s a tremendous leader in this program,” Harvard coach Katey Stone said. “She’ll do anything she can, go anywhere she can. Huge faceoff at the end of the game, won it clean, and that’s the kind of kid you want that commands a lot of respect.”

Accountability and assertion, traits often missing from inexperienced teams, could be found in spades in that bold pronouncement from Raimondi. And these are qualities that “JR,” as she’s known around the locker room, says she inherited from sharing the ice with past Harvard legends.

“I’ve definitely learned from some great players ahead of me,” Raimondi said. “Watching players like [Nicole] Corriero [’05], [sophomore Sarah] Vaillancourt, [senior Julie] Chu, [Angela] Ruggiero [’02-04], the list goes on and on. Just watching them play, you pick up some things, and I’m grateful for the chance that now I get to continue that and hopefully I bring some of the leadership that I learned from those players.”

Stone, too, sees Raimondi and her fellow classmates taking their places in the Crimson tradition of savvy and talented senior leaders.

“They’ve played with some of the best players in college hockey and the world over the course of their time here at Harvard,” Stone said. “So they’re well-seasoned and they know what to do so I’m glad they’re starting to take control.”

But it wasn’t just about intangibles for Raimondi this weekend. She managed to pad her stats as well.

On Friday night, against an unfamiliar opponent in ECAC newcomer Quinnipiac, Raimondi notched four assists in a 5-3 victory. Then she turned around against the Tigers on Saturday and poured in Harvard’s first two scores—the crucial game-tying and go-ahead goals.

Her first strike, a lethal long-range slapshot that tied the score at one late in the second period, turned the tide in the penalty-plagued contest and gave Harvard the upper hand over Princeton.

The power play—a trademark of team success in years past that now features Raimondi running point on its top unit—looked sharp in the victory, as the squad converted three of its eight man-advantage chances..

“Somebody’s got to quarterback [the power play], but anyone’s capable of doing it,” Raimondi said. “We’ve got players who are stepping up filling those spots that people say we don’t have anymore, and it’s going to be different each game.”

Capability is one thing, but leadership quite another. For a pair of games this weekend, Raimondi stepped up and led the Crimson offense. And took the face-off with the game in the balance.

—JONATHAN LEHMAN