W. Hockey Beats Maine, Wins Third Straight Entering Winter Break

The Harvard women's hockey team extended its winning streak to three games this afternoon with a 3-2 victory at Maine. The Crimson went up 3-0 after two periods and then held on despite being outshot 18-3 in the third period.

Three straight wins wasn't the only streak Harvard (8-6-1) kept alive against the Black Bears (7-8-1). The victory was Harvard's seventh in as many tries against Maine in series history. Freshman winger Nicole Corriero, who leads the nation with 18 goals and 28 points this season, upped her goal-scoring streak to seven games. The Crimson also scored twice on the man advantage for the third consecutive game.

Junior center Kalen Ingram assisted on all three Harvard goals to earn her second straight three-point game and regain the national lead in assists-per-game with 17 in 15 contests.

Harvard's first goal came just 2:28 into the game. The opportunity was created when Ingram won the puck down low on the forecheck. Junior captain Jaime Hagerman, seeing that Ingram had no angle to shoot, skated into the zone to give Ingram another option. Ingram put the puck right on Hagerman's stick, and Hagerman found the back of the net for a 1-0 lead.

That score would hold until the 4:07 mark of the second period when the Crimson struck for a power-play goal thanks to textbook execution. The Maine penalty kill played into the Crimson's hands by keying in on Corriero during the power play. When Corriero received the puck at the left boards, she snapped it across ice to Ingram, who immediately found junior forward Tracy Catlin wide open on the left side of the net for the finish.

"No one was on [Catlin]," Hagerman said. "Everyone was paying attention to Nicole as the scoring threat."

Corriero justified Maine's vigilance when she received the puck on a Harvard power play with 8:18 left in the second period. She single-handedly beat two Maine defenders and unleashed from the top of the crease. Maine goaltender Lara Smart made the initial save, but Corriero scored on her own rebound.

"It was just Nicole working her magic," Hagerman said.

With 17 goals in 55 opportunities (30.9 percent), Harvard now has the most proficient power play in the nation. That's a better proficiency than last season when the Crimson also led the nation with 28 goals in 116 opportunities (24.1 percent).

"One of the great things about this program is that we've had the same power play for years," Hagerman said. "Last year we had Tammy [Shewchuk '00-'01] and Jen [Botterill '01-'02] running the show, but we take them out, and put new people in. It's the same setup, just new personnel."

What's astonishing is that Harvard has achieved greater power-play proficiency this season without the 2002 Canadian Olympians Botterill and Shewchuk.

"We're very young, and I think sometimes kids look left, look right, and see that Botterill's not there, Shewchuk's not there, or [Angie] Francisco ['01]-any of those kids," Stone said. "So they learn that they have to do it themselves."

While the power-play success was a positive last night, one of the negatives was that for the third straight game, Harvard allowed a team to cut a two-goal deficit to one in the final four minutes. The Crimson has also allowed goals inside the final four minutes in each of its last five games.

Maine made the game close again as Meagan Aarts scored her 11th and 12th goals of the season, the first goal coming 6:09 into the third, and the second goal coming with 1:25 left in regulation after Smart had been pulled for an extra skater.

Maine outshot Harvard 28-20 but sophomore goaltender Jessica Ruddock made that deficit irrelevant with 26 saves, including 16 in the third period alone. Harvard's lead was threatened in the first period when the Black Bears earned a couple breakaways by splitting Crimson defenders, but Ruddock kept them off the scoreboard.

The Maine game was Harvard's last nonconference game of the season outside of the Beanpot.

Now the Crimson begins a lengthy hiatus. Harvard has just two official two games left before Feb. 1-at Princeton on Jan. 11 and at Yale on Jan. 12. The break is much-needed as Harvard has played a busy schedule over the first two weeks of December.

"This is a perfect time for a break having played eight games in 16 days," Hagerman said. "People have been killing themselves."

It will be a challenge for the Crimson to carry the momentum from its recent three-game win streak through the next two months. Stone stressed to the team the importance of staying focussed and in shape throughout the lighter portion of the schedule.

"Right now we're probably in the best shape we're going to be in all season just because we've been playing so much," Hagerman said. "We really don't want to lose that edge that we've had these last few games."