Women's Hockey Opens Year with Shutout Win

It’s a new year, but the No. 6/6 Harvard women’s ice hockey team brought the same skills back to the ice as it defeated Brown in a shutout on Friday at Meehan Auditorium in Providence.

The Crimson (7-2-2, 6-1-1 ECAC) opened 2015 by extending its winning streak, outskating the Bears (4-10, 1-6 ECAC) in the first Ivy League game of the year to a 6-0 win. This was Harvard’s first time taking the ice since Dec. 6.

"We only had a week prior to this game that we've been together, so we were pretty nervous coming into the game," sophomore forward Sydney Daniels said. "Overall I don't think it tampered with our performance too much."

Nerves aside, the Crimson dominated on the ice. Daniels led the way for the offense with two goals.

Harvard set the game pace less than four minutes into the first period. Daniels fired a shot off of a pass from senior forward Lyndsey Fry. Brown’s sophomore goalie Monica Elvin deflected the shot, but Daniels was right there for the rebound that put the Crimson on the scoreboard.

"Sydney’s first goal was pretty awesome," junior forward Miye D'Oench said. "She drove to the net hard, took a nice shot, and then got her own rebound, which is always an impressive thing to do. It was the first goal of 2015, so it's just an exciting thing."

Early on in the 3rd period, Daniels extended Harvard’s lead by another point. Senior forward Kalley Armstrong-- who earned her first point of the season with the assist--fed her a pass to the low circle near the slot, where Daniels put one past Elvin.

This was Daniels’ first multi-goal game of her Crimson career. But the rest of the team matched Daniels’ efforts.

"We came out with a lot of energy, and that really helped us," Daniels said. "We had a lot of chances that really generated a lot of momentum for us."

Though Harvard was unable to capitalize on its two power plays, it did earn its first shorthanded goal of the year. Just over four minutes into the second period, junior forward Mary Parker offset a Crimson penalty by taking the puck back up the ice and putting it straight past Elvin.

Senior forward Hillary Crowe rounded out the display of individual effort on the Harvard side. Midway through the third period, Crowe took a pass from freshman forward Haley Mullins around the Bears' goal and drove the puck into the top right corner of the net. This marked Crowe's fourth goal of the season.

D’Oench and freshman forward Karly Heffernan also found the back of the net.

On the defensive side, Harvard held the Bears to just 11 shots on goal. Though it gave up six power plays, the team fought off the one—sometimes two—man advantages to keep Brown off the scoreboard.

"Both penalty killing and power plays are something that we've worked on a lot in practice lately, so it was nice to see a lot of success on the penalty kill," D'Oench said.

Junior goaltender Emerance Maschmeyer made eight stops during her 40 minutes in goal. Sophomore goalie Molly Tissenbaum also made three key saves in the final period that helped maintain the shutout.

"Starting out with a win, and having such a big win--winning by six goals--is always great," Daniels said. "It gets the season started off on the right foot [and] just makes us even more excited to... prove to people what we're capable of."

With the win, Harvard moves to within three points of Quinnipiac for first place in the ECAC standings. The Crimson also sit three points ahead of Princeton in its quest to earn the Ivy League title.

"Every Ivy game is huge," D'Oench said. "We don't have an Ivy championship or playoffs, so every regular season game counts towards the Ivy title.... As much momentum as you could possibly have going into 2015 is what you need, so I'd say [this] is a really good start."

—Staff writer Katherine H. Scott can be reached at katherinescott@college.harvard.edu.