Home Ice On the Line As Harvard Faces Colgate, Cornell

Coming off a loss in the Beanpot finals to Boston College, the Harvard women’s hockey team looks to finish off the regular season on a high note before the upcoming playoffs.

The Crimson faces No. 2 Cornell (25-1-1, 19-0-1 ECAC) and Colgate (11-17-3, 8-10-2 ECAC) this weekend at Bright Hockey Center.

Harvard (14-9-4, 13-4-3 ECAC) currently holds the No. 2 seed in the conference and needs to tie or win one of their remaining games in order to hold onto its spot and secure home ice until the ECAC championship game.

“We are looking to take this one game at a time, first with Colgate today—we are going in and looking to play our best,” sophomore forward Jillian Dempsey said. “Our goal is for two wins this weekend and to finish our regular season on a high note ... When we play our best and we move the puck well and play well as a team, it is difficult to beat us.”

Highlighting the importance of clinching home ice for the playoffs is the team’s impressive home record of 7-2-1.

“Home ice would be amazing just because it takes away from the difficulties of traveling somewhere else,” Dempsey said. “We also have our home crowd and home ice. We go through our whole routine: it gives us a lot of confidence and [brings] more excitement by playing in our house.”

Before the Beanpot finals, the Crimson’s past three games had gone into overtime. In the stretch, the team has won in a shootout over Northeastern in the first round of the Boston collegiate tournament, tied Clarkson, and earned a 3-2 victory on a last-second goal from Dempsey in overtime.

Harvard’s upcoming games against Colgate and Cornell feature two opponents with greatly varying degrees of success—the Raiders are the ECAC’s best, and the Big Red is ninth in the conference.

Colgate is trying to hold onto one of the final playoffs seeds for the upcoming ECAC playoffs.

In their previous meeting, the Crimson defeated the Raiders, 3-1, and will look to continue its previous success against the team.

Colgate is led by sophomore forward Britney Phillips and junior goalie Kimberly Sass. Phillips, the Raiders’ leading scorer has 15 goals and 18 assists in 31 games this year. Sass comes into the game with a school-record five shutouts, all of which have been at home.

But the regular season finale against Cornell will be Harvard’s real test.

The Big Red comes into the game fresh off a 7-1 victory to clinch the best record among Ivy League teams. Cornell is undefeated in its last 22 games and has not lost on the road yet this season.

The team has relied on the dynamic scoring duo of junior Rebecca Johnston and freshman Brianne Jenner, both of whom have 21 goals and 20 assists.

In their previous meeting on Nov. 5th, the Big Red took down the Crimson, 3-0, in Ithica.

“I think that this is a completely different game; that was the first [away] game of our year, [but] we have learned a bit [since then],” tri-captain Kate Buesser said. “I think it is more important for us to stick to our game plan that we developed over the season by using our speed and our system to outplay them.”

Cornell is clearly the stronger of Harvard’s weekend opponents, but the Crimson must be careful not to overlook Colgate, who is still trying to scratch its way into the playoffs.

“It is the same mentality for Colgate as it is for Cornell,” Buesser said. “[We] just have to respect what [Cornell] has [in that] it is a higher intensity game,” Buesser said.

This weekend’s games will not only decide home ice for the playoffs, but also gives the team the chance to ride some momentum into the playoffs.

“There is a race for the second seed which would give us home playoff advantage until the final, which is a huge factor for us playing into this weekend,” Buesser said. “There is definitely a kind of [hope] of finishing the regular season with the same intensity you have coming into the playoffs.”