Women’s Ice Hockey Heads North and Comes Away with a Point

After facing two setbacks in a tough slate of conference games last weekend, Harvard traveled to upstate New York to face a pair of ECAC foes in No. 5/5 Clarkson and St. Lawrence. Despite dropping the first game in close fashion, the Crimson rebounded with a tie in the latter to claim a point in the road trip.

HARVARD 0 ST. LAWRENCE 0

Despite the lack of goals, Harvard did not experience a lack of chances. The Crimson generated 29 shots on goal in Saturday afternoon’s contest and earned six power play opportunities. With 28 seconds remaining in the overtime period, the Saints took a tripping minor, setting up Harvard with an opportunity for late-game heroics. After winning the next draw, however, the Crimson could not turn the possession into a last-second scoring chance. St. Lawrence would go on to take one more shot on goal, but that too was turned aside by Harvard junior goalie Beth Larcom. The teams would finish as they had started — scoreless.

“We actually had a lot of chances, but unfortunately, a couple of bounces didn’t go our way,” said co-captain and forward Kate Hallett. “We continued to just pour on the pressure and get pucks to the net.”

Although its offense could not find the back of the net, the Crimson rediscovered its traditional strength on the season with stellar defensive play and goaltending. Notably, Larcom appeared in only her second game of the season — her first appearance since a 34-save performance against Cornell in October. Facing 33 shots from the Saints offense, she proved to be up for the challenge, turning away all of them.

“Regardless of past games, she was ready to play,” Hallett said. “One of the things that we focus on is that, whenever your name is called, just be ready because you never know when that is going to be...Beth really stepped up, owned her role, and showed her ability to compete, bounce back, and always be ready. So we’re really proud of her, and she really played lights out.”

St. Lawrence matched Harvard’s defensive intensity as senior goalie Grace Harrison stymied the Crimson’s 29 shots. Outside of goaltending, the Saints defensive core also supplied 28 blocked shots compared to Harvard’s ten. In other statistics, the teams performed similarly, with St. Lawrence taking 12 penalty minutes compared to the Crimson’s ten and the Saints out-dueling Harvard narrowly at the faceoff dot, 33-29.

Going forward, an ongoing theme for Harvard persists — not necessarily generating chances, but burying them.

“I think it starts in practice,” Hallett said. “If you’re not scoring goals in practice, you’re not going to score goals in games. So I think [the key is] just emphasizing a need to stay hungry and to get to the net and to get bodies to net [and] the idea that every shot on net is a good shot—focusing on taking those smart shots hopefully to either score or produce a good angle for a second opportunity at the net.”

CLARKSON 4 HARVARD 2

Going against the fifth-ranked team in the country, the Crimson faced a two-goal deficit in the late second period. Down 3-1, about to head into the second intermission, Harvard would soon have a chance to regroup and build on the momentum of holding the Golden Knights scoreless for over 15 minutes of game play. With just 58 seconds remaining in the middle period, however, Clarkson would find the back of the net to take a commanding 4-1 lead.

“Whoever has the momentum towards the end of the period, it’s usually big,” Hallett said. “It’s easier then to carry on to the next period with that same momentum. However, we kind of took it as an opportunity to hopefully strike back and to actually come back with more energy than they have.”

Even earlier in the game, the Crimson had shown a willingness to fight back after a Clarkson blow. To begin the contest, Harvard did not get the start it wanted. Playing on the road against a top-five team is already a challenge, and the feat became more difficult as the Golden Knights struck first, taking a 1-0 lead just 3:35 into the game. Despite the setback, the Crimson found its scoring touch almost immediately after the Clarkson tally. On the power play, senior defender Kaitlin Tse rifled a long-range shot past graduate transfer Golden Knight netminder Kassidy Sauve to equalize the score at one.

“One of our mentalities this year has been to always act as if every rink in which we play is our own and just kind of come in and take over as though we do have the home-ice advantage,” Hallett said. “So, I think [we] just kind of [tried] continuing to push forward despite being down by one and not deflating but rather using it as fuel to continue to go.”

Before the first period came to a close, Clarkson would add a second goal on a power play of its own. Building off their momentum in the latter part of the first frame, the Golden Knights added a third goal in the first four minutes of the second. For the next stretch of game play, the two squads traded chances as neither offense found the back of the net until Clarkson’s critical final-minute strike that closed the second period.

Facing the 4-1 deficit, the Crimson did push back in the third, putting together a strong final period just as it had in the pair of losses last weekend. With 2:25 left on the clock, co-captain and forward Lexie Laing (who also went 20-27 at the faceoff dot) sniped the puck top-left corner after tic-tac-toe passing from junior forward Kat Hughes and freshman forward Kristin Della Rovere.

“I think we just decided that there were certain areas in which we needed to tighten up our game,” Hallett said. “It was not due to a lack of effort that the score was 4-1 going into the third period...Rather there were just a couple of errors that we didn’t tighten up, and we recognized that going into the third and did so.”

The Golden Knights, however, would sustain Harvard’s late push and earn their 19th victory of the season.

— Staff writer William Boggs can be reached at william.boggs@thecrimson.com.