Women's Hockey Drops Beanpot Consolation

In the last minute of the second period on Tuesday night, junior goaltender Laura Bellamy dropped her stick.

When freshman defender Michelle Picard tried to return it, Bellamy fumbled around, and she dropped her precious instrument to the ice again. Eventually, Bellamy was able to grab her teammates’ stick and save her squad from danger, but the sequence summarized the frustration for the Harvard women’s hockey team on a night when very little was working for it.

Those in attendance were treated to an entertaining early game that featured 60 minutes of end-to-end hockey with plenty of chances on both ends.

But defensive lapses on the side of the No. 8 Crimson proved to be crucial in its 4-2 loss against No. 6 Boston College on Tuesday night.

“Their aggression wasn’t met here tonight,” junior defender Josephine Pucci said. “We weren’t getting in shooting lanes and getting rid of the rebounds.”

Thanks to puck movement and positioning, the squad’s offense, which fired 35 shots, saw many opportunities from different angles. Yet throughout most of the game, the team was not able to finish.

“We have some forwards that have some really good hands,” junior forward Jillian Dempsey said. “And as forwards, we should be making those plays to help our team out. That was not there today.”

The first goal from the Eagles came after an uncontrollable puck skirted away from the stick of a Crimson defender.

The puck was scooped up by BC’s Meagan Mangene and passed to teammate Danielle Welch, who scored on a point-blank tap in.

The Eagles continued to hound the net in the middle of the first, but Harvard answered back, generating excitement in the crowd with a hard-hit slapshot that deflected into the netting at 7:25.

Half a minute later, the Crimson evened the score on a breakaway down the right side. With only the goaltender in front of her, sophomore forward Elizabeth Parker sent the puck across the lip of the goal to captain Alisa Baumgartner, who slammed it away to even the score.

Despite outshooting the Eagles, 17-9, in the second period, two more unanswered BC goals put Harvard even further behind.

The first of the pair came with some controversy.

During the goal, a group of hounding Eagles surrounded Bellamy, and the tally was endangered of being discounted due to disorderly conduct. But after the play was reviewed by the referees, the ruling on the ice stood, and the Crimson found itself behind another score.

The next BC goal came at 14:30 in the second off the stick of Blake Bolden. This tally came on a slow-tempo shot from the blue line that squeaked by Bellamy; a goal similar to the Eagles’ final score of the night by Ashley Motherwell in the third frame.

One of Harvard’s best chances of the night came off a pass up the boards that landed perfectly on the stick of the sophomore forward Gina McDonald. But the puck was sent harmlessly into the well-positioned goaltender, Corinne Boyles, and the scoreboard remained the same.

Of the Crimson’s 33 shots on goal, 13 came in the 16 minutes Harvard played in man-up situations.

Only one power-play shot—a Dempsey put-back after the original shot by sophomore defender Marissa Gedman clanged off the boards— actually found the back of the net. The goal, which came in the last seven seconds of the first of Harvard’s four third-period power plays, put the Crimson back in striking distance.

But Harvard was not able to recover or improve on its power play, and it finished the game one-for-eight on its power-play opportunities. The Eagles, on the other hand, went two-for-three.

The contest was a rematch of last year’s second-week Beanpot matchup between Harvard and BC. But, this year, the two teams met in the consolation round, rather than the championship.

“[Playing in a consolation match] shouldn’t be a factor,” Pucci said. “BC is a ranked opponent. We should be ready to go for a team like this.”