W. Hockey Battles Saints to Draw

The Harvard women’s hockey team knew that it would be in for a battle Saturday night. And it came ready for combat.

The battle ended without a victor, however, as No. 6 Harvard (18-6-3, ECAC 15-1-2) and No. 5 St. Lawrence (23-5-4, 13-3-2) finished the game in a 4-4 tie after overtime.

The Crimson faced off against St. Lawrence—which came in fresh off its first home loss of the season to Brown the night before—with a chance to claim first place in the ECAC.

“Part of it is good and great job to [the Bears],” junior tri-captain and forward Julie Chu said. “But [the Saints] just had a loss and they don’t like to lose, so they were going to come out strong and put a good game in front of us. We knew that we were ready for a battle.”

The resulting tie was enough to give Harvard a share of the conference lead with No. 3 Dartmouth.

“I was satisfied with the effort, everyone was working hard, the lines were jumping and we were excited that we started the game pretty quickly,” senior defender Ashley Banfield said. “But obviously the score was not what we had hoped for.”

Even though both teams had power-play opportunities in overtime, neither team could push past the other to convert those chances into a goal.

During regulation, freshman Sarah Vaillancourt—coming off four assists against Clarkson on Friday—helped to keep the Crimson in the game by scoring two of Harvard’s four goals.

Vaillancourt scored the Crimson’s fourth and final goal at 8:08 in the third period to secure the tie by blazing up the right side past all of St. Lawrence’s defenders. Her first goal had come at 3:19 in the second period when she was able to take advantage of a power play for Harvard. Senior tri-captain and forward Nicole Corriero actually took the shot but it was Vaillancourt who was able to put the loose puck in the net for the Crimson’s second goal of the game to bring the score to 2-1.

While Vaillancourt had the best statistical night, her linemate Chu also provided key contributions for Harvard. Chu started the scoring with a goal at 6:29 of the first period and added two assists later in the contest.

“I think sometimes you get a little luckier at times,” Chu said. “I don’t think I’m doing anything different as far as playing the puck to the net. Maybe I’m shooting a little bit more. Now my mentality is to get it to the net and see what happens.”

The third scorer of the night was Banfield, who was able to give Harvard a bit of a cushion at the end of the second period, bringing the score to 3-1 with a power-play goal at 18:10.

Power plays have been a big factor in the Crimson’s games lately, with Harvard doing all it can to capitalize on those opportunities. The Crimson has been working hard on its power-play strategies in hopes that it will be better able to convert them into goals.

“Right now power plays are huge for us,” Banfield said. “Our power plays are one of the best in the country so it is obviously a huge source of help for us in goals. It gets the whole team fired up.”

But the cushion created by Banfield’s power play goal did not long, as the Saints came back to score only 29 seconds later to bring the score back within one.

“We had a couple mental lapses and it cost us a couple goals but I think we still outplayed them and we deserved to win the game,” Banfield said. “We weren’t getting a lot of calls our way and bounces didn’t go our way. They got a couple good chances and capitalized on them.”

Harvard outshot St. Lawrence 42-36 and faired better in their power play—scoring during two of their five chances, while the Saints only converted one of their eight power-play opportunities into a goal.

But even though the Crimson was not able to hold on to the lead, with St. Lawrence scoring two more goals for the tie, Harvard junior goalie Ali Boe played impressively. Boe posted 32 saves for the game, blocking most of the Saints’ tough shots.

“When she has to make big saves, she has been coming up big and [Saturday] was a great showing of that,” Chu said. “There were a lot of huge opportunities that we unfortunately gave them and she was there to make the huge save.”

With the tie, the Crimson is now tied for the top spot with No. 3 Dartmouth in the ECAC standings with only two games left.

—Staff writer Abigail M. Baird can be reached at ambaird@fas.harvard.edu.