W. Hockey Upsets No. 2 Big Green

HANOVER, N.H.—Harvard and Dartmouth found themselves in a familiar contest Saturday night—one team was on top and the other looking for an upset.

Unlike last year, when Dartmouth gave then-No. 1 Harvard its first loss of the season, this past Saturday the two teams traded places.

The No. 6 Crimson went into Thompson Arena to face the No. 2 Big Green—who are also ranked number one in the Pair-wise Rankings—and came away with a convincing 6-3 win.

“That’s the kind of hockey we should be playing,” Harvard coach Katey Stone said. “I said to the kids going to third period, ‘Act like you’ve been here before—half of you have.’ And the young kids? We recruited them because they’ve been in big games. It’s time to act like you’ve been there before. This is the kind of hockey we’ve expected this team to be playing, and now we’re playing it, so it’s awesome.”

Dartmouth was riding a 10-game win streak after losing its only game of the season in overtime Dec. 12 at the hands of No. 1 Minnesota. The win is the Crimson’s first against Dartmouth since Feb. 7, 2003. Harvard is now 6-0-1 in its last seven games.

For the Crimson, tri-captain Nicole Corriero made sure her last trip to Thompson was one to remember as she notched five goals, including an empty-netter with 43 seconds left that was the icing on the cake. With her five-goal effort, Corriero has taken over as the national leader in goals per game from Dartmouth’s Katie Weatherston.

“It was my last game probably in Thompson Arena, so I wanted to go out with a bang,” Corriero said.

It ended up being quite the bang, as she registered Harvard’s first five-goal effort since her own at the beginning of last season against Union and alone matched the most number of goals that Dartmouth had previously given up to an entire team this season—five against Minnesota.

“She certainly has a knack [for scoring] and she has some pretty awesome lineups that are able to help her out too,” Dartmouth coach Mark Hudak said. “You can’t focus on any one person out there, but if you focus on any one person out there, Vaillancourt might it in the net, or Chu might put it the net. It’s a great line.”

The last-minute goal was hardly Corriero’s only tally of the night—she also notched the game-winner in the last minute of the second period. After driving in towards the net with the puck, she kept her stick on ice, wedged the puck against her opponent’s stick and got a lucky bounce up and off of her shoulder to get the goal.

Although Corriero might have gotten the majority of the stats, it was the all around tight play and fast movement that kept the Crimson one step ahead of the Big Green.

“I thought Harvard played a great game,” Hudak said. “I think they made a lot of breaks for themselves. I thought we played a good game, but I don’t think we played a great game like Harvard did. Harvard was 100 percent and I felt like we were 90 percent today. And that’s to Harvard’s credit, they did a nice job.”

After Dartmouth scored 39 seconds into the game, Harvard tied it up in the seventh minute with a power-play goal from Corriero and never trailed again.

For the night, the Crimson was 2-for-5 on the power play, and is 11-for-25 in its last three games.

On the defensive side of special teams, the Crimson was just as effective at limiting the Big Green. Dartmouth’s power play, second in the country at 28 percent, was held to 1-for-6 and failed to convert on a key two-man advantage late in the first period. During that time, the Harvard defense continually threw the puck back up the ice and junior goalkeeper Ali Boe made two important glove saves to keep the momentum on the Crimson’s side.

“Ali Boe played great,” Stone said. “She didn’t see a lot of shots at times—there was a lot of traffic in front of her—but she was very sticky when the puck came to her. There weren’t multiple shots and so she answered the bell as well.”

In the second period, Harvard managed to keep the momentum on its side by responding to Dartmouth’s goals and resultant raucous crowd with its own tallies.

After the Big Green’s Tiffany Hagge swept in to the crease and put the puck past Boe to knot the score at 2-2 at 8:35 of the second period, Harvard grabbed the lead back a minute and a half later. Tri-captain Julie Chu received the puck at the top of the offensive zone and a quick slap shot on net managed to trickle through the legs of Dartmouth’s Kate Lane.

Later in the period, Hagge retied the game by scoring with just over a minute and appearing to give the Big Green the momentum heading into the last intermission. But with 58 seconds left, Corriero took the puck on net and managed to wrap it around Lane to take the lead right back.

“Being able to respond so quickly makes a big difference in how you’re building your confidence in the game as a whole because you’re not thinking, ‘Oh my gosh,’” Corriero said. “The span where you’re actually tied is not that long, and you’re not playing with that need to answer back. We didn’t give them a lot of time to build momentum after tying the game.”

“It certainly takes away your momentum, you get up thinking you’re going to be fine, maybe you’ve got a go-ahead here, and boom: they come back and score quickly. That’s a trait of a good team,” Hudak said.

Now Harvard turns its attention from ECAC play to the Beanpot, where it will seek to capture its seventh straight title over the next two weeks.

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