Saz Gets the Call...As Usual

The important names are right in the program.

For the Tigers: Mollie Marcoux, Sue Finney and Shari Wolkon.

For the Crimson: Julie Sasner, Brita Lind, Jennifer White and Char Joslin.

All seven are either present or former freshman sensations--players who made a sudden impact on the world of Ivy League women's hockey.

Sasner, Lind and Joslin have already nabbed Ivy League Rookie-of-the-Year honors. White and Finney finished close to the top in the balloting in their respective years, while Marcoux and Wolkon are contending for the honor this year.

These seven made an impact on the game right from the opening faceoff in Saturday's Harvard-Princeton showdown at Bright Center. All started the game.

As the game wore on, the freshman sensations became more and more important.

Brita Lind banked the puck off the leg of a Princeton player for an important second-period goal.

Marcoux raced in from the point to give the Tigers an even more important power-play goal in the third.

Joslin didn't have an offensive impact the way she normally does. But on the defensive end of the ice, she broke up rushes and skated and passed with supreme confidence.

And if the Harvard defense broke down, White was there to make saves that bordered on the incredible.

One rush in the third period typified the interaction of the sensations. Marcoux was skating one-on-one against Joslin. Joslin swept the puck off the freshman's stick and it dribbled to White, who slipped the puck out to Lind. It didn't seem fair that so few players could have such a big impact.

Wolkon skated completely around the Harvard defense and worked a pass to Finney who scored to give Princeton a 4-3 lead with under four minutes to play in regulation.

Harvard now needed a goal. Badly.

It was time to rely on a freshman sensation, but this time it had to be a seasoned freshman sensation, one who was not just a flash-in-the-pan, but one who possessed enough consistency to become a sophomore, junior, and senior sensation.

Saz.

Harvard needed the co-captain on the ice, so she double-shifted with Lind and usual right-wing Julia Trotman for the next minute and a half, then with Karen Carney and Christine Burns.

"I saw the wings coming off the bench and Coach [John Dooley] was waving at me [to stay on the ice] and I couldn't say no," Sasner said.

The improvised Carney-Sasner-Burns trio was on the ice for about a minute when Sasner skated one-on-two into the Princeton zone.

The second-year captain faked left, then right, then lifted a floating wrist shot. The puck hung in the air for what seemed like forever and settled behind Princeton netminder Dodie Colavecchio.

The crowd went wild. Sasner, Harvard's all-time leading scorer, came through in the clutch when almost nobody else had the legs; the teams had skated over 52 breathtaking minutes.

And now there would be more minutes. Nine of them.

There were a couple of Tiger opportunities in the extra session, but White rose to the occasion, getting her leg pads, glove, or even the crook of her arm on some shots.

And then suddenly the puck squirted diagonally across the ice from Harvard's defensive right-wing corner down to its offensive left-wing corner. Two Princeton defenders chased the puck.

And so did former freshman sensation Brita Lind.

"I felt good," Lind said, "[It's] good to make things happen."

Racing with all the fury of an Alberta Clipper breeze, Lind--who hails from Sasketchewan--reached the puck first. Then she dug it out of the corner and waited.

For Saz.

It was a little flip shot from 15 feet out.

It wasn't pretty, but it counted.

And in the same play in a game destined to go down in Harvard legend, two former freshman sensations-turned-upperclassmen showed they were no longer just former freshman sensations.