Women's Hockey Crushes Princeton in 10-1 Rout

The No. 7/8 Harvard women’s hockey team rode a dominant second period to an easy 10-1 victory over Princeton on Saturday at the Bright Hockey Center.

The Crimson (16-7-1, 13-4-1 ECAC) scored a season-high 10 unanswered goals, seven of which came in the prolific second frame.

Junior forward Jillian Dempsey, who scored five goals on the night, led the charge with four second-period goals.

Harvard was looking to rebound against a Tigers (10-11-4, 8-8-2) team that had shut out the Crimson, 3-0, in the last contest and was coming off a win over No. 10 Dartmouth on Friday.

“We picked up our momentum from [yesterday’s 4-2 win over Quinnipiac], and we were hungry,” Dempsey said. “This team handed it to us in January and we had something to prove out there today, and things finally started falling our way.”

“We were outhustling them to every puck and beating them all over the ice,” Dempsey continued. “Then the puck started going in and we just fed off of that.”

Princeton scored the first goal by taking advantage of an early opportunity when junior Corey Stearns flipped a wrist shot past the left side of Crimson goalie Laura Bellamy on the first shot of the game.

But in the second period, Dempsey started the Harvard streak when she collected the puck and dumped it into the Tigers zone on the left side of the ice. The junior moved past the defense to the left and fired a shot past the goalie, nailing the top right corner of the goal.

From there Dempsey took control, scoring a shorthanded breakaway goal in which she faked going right the goalie and slid a shot past the netminder to put Harvard up, 2-1. She continued her onslaught of scoring by fighting for position in front of the net, taking a pass from junior Josephine Pucci and directing the puck into the net for a hat trick.

“We have a pretty good rivalry against [Princeton] so it was just one of those days where things fell into place,” Dempsey said. “I just kept going to the net, and people were finding me. And [the puck] just kept going in.”

Crimson sophomore Gina McDonald then followed a minute later with a score to extend the lead to 4-1 with under five minutes left in the period.

Soon after, Dempsey made it a four-goal lead for the home team. After taking a well-placed pass by freshman Samantha Reber, who poked the puck by the defender and drew the goalie, Dempsey put it away for her fourth goal of the period.

Harvard freshman Hillary Crowe put the finishing touch on the period for the Crimson by taking a pass from the point and shooting beyond the reach of the goalie.

“I think [the scoring] shows what we are capable of,” Harvard coach Katey Stone said. “We need to make a decision that we are going to do that every day, and certainly we are capable of that kind of offense. But again our offense starts with playing great defense and moving it up the ice, and I think we did that well today.”

“We didn’t really come to play [in January’s loss to Princeton], and they came ready and they outworked us,” Dempsey said. “We don’t want to be that team [that gets outworked]. We want to be the team that works hard and that’s how we define ourselves.”

The Crimson was able to close out the game in the third behind a strong defense and three goals within a span of three minutes. Reber struck first in the final frame when she took a pass from behind the net and scored through the five hole.

Then Crowe added her second goal of the game with two minutes remaining before a fifth goal from Dempsey with 40 seconds left completed the 10-goal scoring run.

“From the beginning even though they got a quick goal we never let down at all,” Stone said. “We continued to stay focused and built momentum as the game went on…. We just owned the game in a lot of ways. Overall it was great to see all three lines, the [defense], and everyone doing what you need to do to win.”

—Staff writer Cameron Dowd can be reached at camerondowd14@college.harvard.edu.