W. Hockey Falls To Golden Gophers In NCAA Title Game

PROVIDENCE, R.I.—Things fall apart.

For the first 40 minutes of the NCAA championship game, the nation's top two women's college hockey teams—No. 1 Minnesota and No. 2 Harvard—fought an evenly matched 2-2 contest that had all the markings of an epic battle to the end.

Then the Golden Gophers' first line—Natalie Darwitz, Krissy Wendell and Kelly Stephens—decided to take over the game. The three-pronged attack scored four unanswered goals in the final frame of action to put Minnesota (30-4-2, 19-3-2 WCHA) on top 6-2 and send the Crimson (30-4-1, 15-3-0 ECAC) home with a loss in the finals for the second year in a row.

The Golden Gophers' third period marked a total shift from the game's first two.

"We talked about 'this is our chance to reach our goals,'" said Minnesota coach Laura Halldorson. "And one of the things we talked about at the beginning of the year was to meet [President] George [Bush]—that was one of our goals. We’ve seen other teams go to the White House and we wanted to go."

In the final frame of the championship game, Darwitz struck first, starting Harvard’s demise just nine seconds into the third period.

She received a pass from Wendell off the opening faceoff and took the puck along the left side, out-skating Ruggiero to the faceoff circle, where she fired a shot at sophomore Ali Boe.

Darwitz skated in past co-captain Angela Ruggiero and knocked in the rebound past Boe’s right, but as soon as the officials signaled a goal, Boe and the rest of the Crimson turned in protest and the goal was put under review.

The controversy arose because an official blew his whistle prematurely and after Harvard's protests the officials called a timeout to review the play.

During the post-game press conference, Carolyn Campbell-McGovern, chair of the NCAA Women's Frozen Four Committee and the Senior Associate Director of the Ivy Group, issued a statement on behalf of the NCAA explaining the officials' ruling.

The referee ruled that the whistle had blown after the puck crossed the line and the goal stood—setting the record for quickest goal score in a period at nine seconds, breaking the old mark of 21 seconds set by Jennifer Botterill '02-'03 last year.

"Sometimes the game just goes your way and sometimes it doesn’t," Ruggiero said. "We kept our composure and were fighting."

Just 32 game seconds after Darwitz's goal—more than a few minutes had passed due to the officials' timeout—Stephens scored by deflecting a Wendell shot taken from the left faceoff circle past Boe's left.

With 19 minutes left, the Crimson had a chance to fight back into the game. But the two goals signaled a complete change in momentum that seemed to break the spirit of the skaters—especially Boe.

In the next few minutes immediately following the Gophers' fourth goal, the Crimson showed signs of life and gave the Harvard faithful reason to believe in a comeback.

Junior Nicole Corriero, despite having at least two Gophers trying to drag her down each time she campaigned toward the net, trudged along and fired shot after shot at Minnesota goalie Jody Horak, finishing with nine shots on goal for the game.

Unfortunately, her only goal came in the second period off a Ruggiero set-up, and she wasn’t able to snap the Gophers' dominance in the final frame.

As the end of the game drew near, Harvard had more and more trouble putting together quality scoring opportunities and holding the puck deep in the Gopher's defensive zone.

"We put a lot of pressure on them down the stretch of the game—if we had been tired we probably wouldn’t have been able to do that," Stone said.

The nail in the coffin might very well have come on Wendell's goal at 6:54—Minnesota’s fifth of the game and fourth unanswered.

"We had smiles on our faces for that third period, and we never let up and enjoyed every minute of it," Halldorson said.

Darwitz rounded out the period with a hat trick with slightly less than seven minutes left in the game.

"Sometimes against a fast team, you just look like you're running around a little bit," Stone said. "We didn't make it easy on ourselves when we did put the puck in deep. We lost it at the blue line a lot of the time. Every once in awhile, we just got caught watching instead of participating."

The game's finish was a difficult and disappointing ending after the Crimson's solid start.

Although Minnesota dominated the opening minutes in the number of shots they got on Boe, the Crimson got on the board first.

Seven minutes into the game, the Gophers held a 6-1 advantage in shots—a statistical dominance that Harvard usually sees in its favor—but was simply flinging shots from wherever they had a chance as opposed to crashing the net and getting the rebounds. The latter style of play led to the third period barrage of goals for Minnesota.

Following their final practice, however, Halldorson had said that the Gophers style of play was not to simply fire away every chance they have.

"We are not the kind of team that shoots every chance we get," Halldorson said. "It’s not about sheer numbers, but we want to get to the net and create great opportunities."

But it was the Crimson who seemed to adhere to this style early on, when junior Kat Sweet sent the Harvard fans into a craze with the game’s first goal.

Right before the 13-minute mark in the first period, freshman Katie Johnston sent the puck to classmate Caitlin Cahow at the point. Cahow then fired the puck towards the right side of the net and found Sweet, who managed to get the end of her stick on the puck and jump it top shelf past Horak's left.

But the goal was not the only solid scoring chance for the Crimson in a period in which it was outshot 13-7 by the Gophers.

Twice, Corriero sparked the offense by taking the puck up through the defense herself and trying to fake Horak or beat her to the right side.

On the second of these opportunities—which came with 9:15 to play in the first—her shot was partly stopped by Horak and partly by Minnesota defensman Allie Sanchez. But neither got a handle on the puck, which found its way over to co-captain Lauren McAuliffe on the left side of the crease. While Horak's right leg lay extended back after trying to stop Corriero’s shot, McAuliffe picked the puck up off the ice and tried to jump it into the net. Her shot clanged off the inside of the right post, causing the red light behind the glass to flash, though the officials ultimately ruled that the puck had never crossed the goal line.

Harvard's chances came from a dump-and-chase style that tested the young Minnesota defense.

"If there is a weak spot in their game, it's their defensemen," Stone said. "We were trying to pinch on the boards a little bit and wreak a little havoc with their defensemen. I think it did work for a while."

But in the third period, Minnesota's first line took over the game and proved too much for Harvard to handle.

For the Crimson, it was a bitter end to what was a spectacular quest for the national championship.

For the Gophers, it was victory at long last.

"I have never in my life gotten to throw my gloves up," Darwitz said. "I've been in these games, I've been in world championships and we've always gotten second. But I don't think this feeling is going to go away for a while.

"This is sweet. This is awesome."

—Staff writer John R. Hein can be reached at hein@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Gabriel M. Velez can be reached at gmvelez@fas.harvard.edu.