NOTEBOOK: Strengths Become Weaknesses in Loss

Despite what the scoreboard might suggest, the Harvard women’s hockey didn’t play any differently than it usually does Friday night. It didn’t start the game half asleep, and it didn’t struggle to control the puck. Rather, the Crimson ran into a Cornell squad that was able to use the team’s usual offensive strengths against it.

One thing Harvard has been known for is its aggressive forechecking attack, which has allowed it to outshoot most of its opponents and dominate the puck—both of which it did against the Big Red.

“They forechecked hard,” Cornell coach Doug Derraugh said. “They kept us in our end a lot,”

But forechecking can leave gaping holes at the other end of the ice, and the Big Red was able to find them.

“Sometimes if you can get pucks in behind them and get speed through the neutral zone, you can get some really good opportunities,” Derraugh said.

That Cornell did, as it took advantage of a failed rush to put the Crimson down by a goal two and a half minutes into the game. Once the Big Red got the puck, sophomore Catherine White was find open ice on Harvard’s end and teammate Amanda Young hit her with the puck for an easy goal against Crimson freshman Laura Bellamy. Four minutes later, a different Cornell skater, Karlee Overguard, found the back of the net on an unassisted tally to put the Crimson down by two early in the game.

It seemed that any time Harvard’s skaters took a risk, Cornell punished them for it.

“We really liked how we forechecked tonight,” Crimson coach Katey Stone said. “It was a couple bounces here and a few misreads in plays.”

GOING BACK FOR SECONDS

The slaughter didn’t stop when the first period closed. After controlling the puck and shutting the Big Red down for the final 13 minutes of the first half, it seemed like the Crimson was starting to regain control of the game. But the onslaught was only beginning, as three goals in three minutes dashed any hope Harvard might have had for a Frozen Four berth.

The first of these looked similar to the first two goals of the game, in that Cornell caused a turnover behind its blue line and found the back of the net shortly after—but this time it was two skaters closing in on Bellamy. Laura Fortino dished the puck to Chelsea Karpenko for a give-and-go. Karpenko put Bellamy off balance before sending the puck back to Fortino, who scored on an open net.

Shortly after, the Big Red proved that it didn’t need a fast break to score, as Melanie Jue capitalized on chaos around the crease, squeezing her stick around Crimson freshman Kaitlin Spurling for a fourth goal that looked almost like an accident.

Less than two minutes later, Cornell struck again, giving it a five-goal lead before half the game had elapsed.

“I’m very proud of our players,” Stone said. “We could have wilted away early in the second period, and we didn’t. There’s a lot to be proud of and a lot to build on.”

BRICK HOUSE

At some points during the night, Harvard had to have been wondering whether it was really shooting against a human goaltender or a backboard.

For the majority of the night, the Big Red’s Amanda Mazzotta seemed impenetrable, allowing Cornell to head to the Twin Cities off a four-goal victory despite registering only 18 shots, half of the Crimson’s 36.

“Our attitude throughout the game was just to keep playing, keep putting shots on net, keep trying to get chances,” co-captain Kathryn Farni said. “I thought we played really hard, and we took a lot of great shots.”

But Mazzotta was unfazed. Perhaps because she’d seen them twice before, the sophomore goaltender turned back shots from most of the Crimson’s usual suspects, including juniors Kate Buesser and Liza Ryabkina and freshman Jillian Dempsey.

Perhaps it was not surprising, then, that the two skaters who stumped Mazzotta and the Big Red defense were senior Randi Griffin and junior Leanna Coskren. Despite ranking fourth and fifth among Harvard’s scoring leaders, respectively, neither had scored on Mazzotta in the two earlier matchups between the teams.

“When we put a lot of pressure on their goaltender, she did a really good job,” Stone said. She put the rebounds into the corners. When she left something there, they did a good job of keeping us from getting in.”

—Staff writer Christina C. McClintock can be reached at ccmcclin@fas.harvard.edu.