Game Two: Clarkson Reverses Luck in Crunch-Time

One Saturday later, Clarkson flipped the script on Harvard.

A week after the Crimson notched a final-minute game-tying goal on the road against the Golden Knights and followed with a last-second score to earn the victory and home ice for the ECAC quarterfinals, Clarkson responded to another late Harvard equalizer with a sudden-death game-winner of its own to prevail, 2-1, and push the playoff series to a decisive third game.

Katie Morrison put home a rebound past senior netminder Ali Boe with 29 seconds left in the first overtime period to ensure a rubber match and dash the hopes of a sweep by host Harvard.

“It was good up-and-down hockey,” Crimson coach Katey Stone said. “Their goalie made big saves. Our goalie made big saves. We got a little careless with the puck in our own zone at the end and it cost us.”

The Crimson managed to force extra time when freshman Jenny Brine knocked in an inadvertent feed from senior Jennifer Raimondi with 2:10 remaining in regulation.

Brine gathered the puck just inside of the blue line and forced a high wrist shot on Golden Knights keeper Kira Hurley.

Hurley let the offering fall to the left side, where Raimondi swiped and pushed the puck to the far post for Brine to body the pass into the net for her team-leading 17th goal of the season.

Junior Jennifer Sifers was also credited with an assist on the play.

“The puck squirted out to the middle and gave me a one-on-one,” Brine said. “I wanted to shoot to the right and I hit the goalie in the shoulder. The rebound came out and [Raimondi] whacked at it, and then I was in the crease and it just kind of went in, off of me.”

Harvard was forced to continue its recent pattern of playing from behind after accruing another deficit, falling behind yet again on a middle-frame strike by Micheleen Devine at the 10:16 mark of the second period.

The one-goal advantage came on the heels of an initial 30 minutes in which Clarkson received two powerplays and controlled the flow of the contest. But the Crimson penalty kill remained firm—as it did all afternoon—and Boe preserved a clean sheet through the first half of regulation.

Harvard had several chances to answer, including two man-advantage sequences late in the second period and another late in the third, but floundered with an extra skater throughout, finishing 0-for-4 on the power play for the game.

The contrast between the team’s effort in the early going and its fervent charge in the last minutes of regulation revealed its recurring inability to string together sixty minutes of consistent hockey.

“That’s been the story all season,” Stone said. “So why would it be any different in the playoffs? You’re not all of sudden going to magically show up with a different team. We got better as the game went on. We were able to tie it up there down the stretch and make things interesting.”

In overtime, the Crimson had a couple of excellent opportunities to end it before eventually falling.

Early in the frame, Hurley stuffed a Brine one-timer off of a measured cross-crease feed from freshman Kirsten Kester.

Later, captain Carrie Schroyer circled around the back of the net and picked out Sifers at the right post, only for Sifers’ stab to be whistled dead with the puck sitting an inch off the goal line.

“It seems like we were dominating most of the overtime,” Brine said. “We had all of those chances to put it away and we just couldn’t put it in the net. And then they get one good chance and it’s over. But I guess that’s overtime for you.”

Both offenses were curtailed by the sterling goalie play on both ends. Boe was the tough-luck loser after stopping 33 shots from a withering Golden Knights attack in nearly 80 minutes of action.

And Hurley, who also finished with 33 saves, turned away numerous point-blank Harvard looks.

“Ali Boe made some huge saves for us,” Stone said. “Their goaltender obviously made some huge saves for them.”

“Both of them are doing what their teams need them to do,” she added.

The result proved another example, after the previous weekend’s last-second denouement and Friday’s nail-biter, of how evenly matched the two squads are and promised an exciting conclusion to the series in yesterday’s finale.

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