W. Hockey To Battle Minnesota for National Title Today

DURHAM, N.H.—Every Achilles has his heel. And on any given Sunday, it can be found and exploited.

This evening, the Harvard women’s hockey team will attempt to find whatever weakness lies within Minnesota’s seemingly invincible arsenal in order to capture its first NCAA championship after two consecutive years of finishing second-best, including last year’s 6-2 loss to the Golden Gophers in the finals.

According to Harvard coach Katey Stone, Minnesota may have revealed that its weakness is its offensive strength—that is, a defense that has not been consistently challenged and might prove to be vulnerable if met with sufficient force.

“Every team has weaknesses. It’s just a matter of on a given day finding out which ones they are,” Stone said. “We know what they’re capable of doing offensively. I’m anxious to see how well they play defense.”

Considering Minnesota’s impressive numbers, exploiting any weakness will take everything the Crimson has to offer.

Minnesota boasts the top scoring line in the nation. Senior Kelly Stephens and juniors Natalie Darwitz and Krissy Wendell—all U.S. National Team members—have combined for 116 goals on the season and have been integral to the team’s 4.95 goals per-game average.

But these offensive guns are reinforced by the nation’s second-best defense, which allows an average of just 1.31 goals per-game this season and held Dartmouth’s nationally second-best offense to a mere 10 shots on goal—including zero in the final frame—in the Gophers’ 7-2 trouncing of the Big Green Friday night.

The end result is that the Golden Gophers boast the nation’s best scoring margin at 3.64.

Nevertheless, Stone contends that the Gophers have yet to be sufficiently challenged at their own net.

“My hope is that they’re going to have to play a lot of defense, and they’re not accustomed to having to play a lot of defense,” she said. “If we keep things simple, bring the puck to the net, they’re going to have to expend a tremendous amount of energy playing some defense as well.”

The thought isn’t at all absurd. In Friday night’s victory, Minnesota’s defense blocked 40 Dartmouth shots, hence the lone 10 to reach Horak. But of those 10, two found their way to the back of the net. Had more shots reached the net, who knows what turn the game’s direction may have taken.

But Minnesota coach Laura Halldorson maintains that any alleged weaknesses do not exist.

“The team we’ve had this year has the most depth we’ve ever had in every position and I have a lot of confidence in our goaltender,” she said.

Both Stone and Halldorson, however, agree that the tide of the game might turn on the power play.

“Since Christmas we have the best power play in the country and probably one of the best penalty kills in the country and that’s gotten us to this point,” Stone said. “We’ve had to kill a lot of penalties because we’ve played really aggressively.”

Harvard will have to refrain from taking bad penalties in the offensive zone, a glaring stain in the Crimson’s 4-1 NCAA semifinal victory over St. Lawrence Friday night. Harvard compiled 12 penalties in the win.

Harvard’s strength, much like Minnesota’s, relies in large part on an offensively explosive first line. Twenty-four of tri-captain Nicole Corriero’s 59 goals have come on a power play that poses a triple threat to opponents with teammates Julie Chu and Sarah Vaillancourt.

“When you go out with those three top players coming down at you, you just have to make sure you’re playing the body, keep them to the outside, make their shots go where Jody can easily make a save,” Gopher defenseman Lyndsay Wall said. “When they’re in close they have a high percentage of shooting and they can bury the puck easily.”

Halldorson contends Minnesota will be prepared to extinguish Harvard’s offensive firepower.

“We know what they are trying to do. We don’t want back-door passes where Corriero just taps the puck in,” Halldorson said. “She has had a great season this year doing that. We can’t give up those kinds of goals—we’re going to make them work for every goal they get.”

Though Harvard lost to Minnesota 5-3 on Nov. 27 of this season, both teams realize that too much has changed to use that game as a measuring stick for tomorrow’s championship bout.

“That was very early in the season and it was especially early for Harvard because they start later than we do,” Halldorson said. “They’ve definitely come along second half of the year, and I think they’re playing a lot better now than they were playing back then.”

“What I remember was their top line went against our top line quite a bit, and that was fun to watch,” she added. “You’re talking about players that love to compete and all have a lot of offensive abilities. You’ll probably see a little bit of that Sunday too.”

Minnesota has been the No. 1 team in the nation all year. Harvard is 19-0-2 in its last 21 games, going undefeated in 2005. Tomorrow evening, the unstoppable force will attempt to dethrone the immovable object from its pedestal in women’s college hockey.

“We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t think we could win the national championship,” Stone said. “We could have packed it in when we were 7-6-1 on Dec. 11. We feel really good about the things we’re doing and we’ll play tomorrow’s game with a tremendous amount of confidence.”

Harvard and Minnesota face off for the NCAA Championship tomorrow at 4:30 p.m.. The game will be streamed live on whrb.com and broadcast on CSTV.

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