Icewomen Tie Dartmouth, Yield to SLU

A tie and a loss.

It might be a let-down after winning a tournament the previous weekend, but Coach John Dooley and the Harvard women's hockey team will take the draw and the defeat in their hardest road trip of the year.

"We're coming together like dynamite," Dooley said. "The tournament in Minnesota [the All-American Intercollegiate Women's Ice Hockey Tournament] was so valuable that it put our team chemistry one month ahead. We're playing with eight freshman. They're learning every day, but it's on-the-job training. They'll get better and better and learn from their mistakes."

After Harvard (3-1-1) tied Dartmouth Friday in Hanover, N.H., 2-2, it had to face St. Lawrence the next night. The Saints didn't need divine intervention, but simply took advantage of the schedule to skate past the road-weary Crimson, 7-4.

"Dartmouth and St. Lawrence are two of the stronger teams we play and [travel] was a whole new experience for most of the freshman so it showed in their endurance," Dooley said. "When we go back on the road again against Princeton and Yale, the idea of travel won't be so new to them and we'll be able to produce a stronger game."

In Saturday's contest, Harvard opened the scoring when freshman forward A.J. Mleczko converted a feed from co-captain Francie Walton 34 seconds into the game. St. Lawrence came back, scoring at 12:05 and again at 15:01 (shorthanded) to take the lead into the locker room.

The Crimson tied the game when Mleczko scored again at 5:11 of the second period, assisted by co-captain Joey Alissi and junior defender Winkie Mleczko. The Saints responded with two quick goals, the first coming on the power play at 6:30 and the second at 8:03 to regain the lead.

"Our biggest problem is that we're too dependent on our one big line of A.J. Mleczko, Joey Alissi and Stacy Kellogg," Dooley said. "We have potential in the other two lines, but we have to get more scoring punch out of them. While the players on our first line all played on the Connecticut Polar Bears and are familiar with each other, these people are brand new playing with each other. The team in February will be a different team."

Harvard staged a comeback early in the third period when A.J. Mleczko completed her hat trick at 4:13, assisted by Alissi and sophomore forward Stacy Kellogg. Sophomore defender Holly Leitzes completed the comeback, scoring at 8:25 on the power play from Alissi and A.J. Mleczko.

"The most impressive thing in St. Lawrence was that we were down 4-2 going into the third period and tied it," Dooley said. "We're very happy with both games. A bounce of the puck could've won it for us. We had a lot of opportunities."

St. Lawrence, however, notched the gamewinner two minutes later and followed up with two empty net goals, the first at 17:27 and the second at 17:47 (shorthanded). Junior netminder Erin Villiotte turned away 24 shots in the losing effort.

"I think we're a little disappointed in how we played," Kellogg. "We played both teams very hard, but we just didn't get the bounces. They're both very good teams and we had lapses of intensity at times. We just have to keep the intensity up. But it's still early in the season and we're still getting used to playing with each other."

In Friday's action, Harvard jumped to an early 2-0 lead with two unassisted first period goals by A.J. Mleczko and Kellogg. The Big Green chipped away to salvage a tie.

"We demonstrated we could play at a higher level when we played against Brown [in Minnesota]," Dooley said. "We play a single game against Northeastern University [this weekend] and they won both games up north against Dartmouth and St. Lawrence. We should give them a good game."