Harvard Readies for Weekend Conference Tune-Up

In the wake of a disappointing 2-1 loss to St. Lawrence at home on Friday night, Harvard women’s hockey head coach Katey Stone described the need for her team to get back in sync as “re-inventing the wheel.”

But it will be hard to identify real or wheel change this weekend, as the Crimson meets conference also-rans Union and Rennselaer (RPI), a pair of opponents it is sure to roll over.

“I think we need to get ourselves back where we were before Christmas,” Stone said yesterday, “before we got banged up. To get back that chemistry and work ethic and get rolling here in the last stretch of the season.”

No. 6 Harvard (15-4-2, 12-3-1 ECAC) ventures to upstate New York for the conference’s softest road trip, taking on last-place Union (4-20-0, 0-16-0) in Schenectady tonight and the Engineers (12-14-1, 8-7-1) in Troy tomorrow evening. The steps that the squad is trying to make in preparation for the postseason, therefore, may go unnoticed until the Crimson again has the chance to challenge one of the country’s best teams. That test may await on Tuesday at No. 9 Boston College in the opening round of the Beanpot Tournament, but, with six conference tilts left and only one against a team with a winning record, it could lie as much as a month in the future.

“We have to take one at a time, play better than the team in front of us, and then move on,” Stone said.

Such is the nature of the ECAC, a conference noted for the continued success of its top programs but lacking depth at the bottom of its 12-team lineup. In the latest national poll, Harvard was joined in the top six by traditional powerhouses Dartmouth and St. Lawrence, ranking third and fourth, respectively.

The Crimson is 0-3-1 on the season against those two units. Including a December draw with No. 5 New Hampshire, Harvard totes a discouraging 0-3-2 record against the current top five. Versus the rest of the country, the Crimson is a nearly perfect 15-1-0, a loss at UConn the only blemish.

“I’m not [concerned],” Stone said of the apparent trend. “We’ll have a opportunity to play some of those teams again and hopefully things will go our way.”

Surprising Colgate has used upset wins over the first-place Big Green and the fourth-place Saints, coupled with a 10-2-1 mark against the league’s bottom two-thirds, to move into a second-place tie with Harvard in the conference standings.

Neither front-runner nor upstart, the Crimson’s upcoming opponents are studies in the final two levels of quality in the league—the opportunist and the doormat. Union is definitively the latter; the Dutchwomen are working on an astounding streak of 58 straight losses in league play, dating back to February 2004. A total of 16 of those defeats have come this season, as Union has been outscored 108-11 in conference action. Further evidence of the Dutchwomen’s futility: 10 of the team’s losses have been in shutout fashion, and seven have been by seven goals or more.

RPI, in only its second year at the Division I level and its first year in the ECAC, has made remarkable headway in a short time. The Engineers, led by sophomore netminder Ashley Mayr, have accumulated eight wins in the conference, but have faltered against its top-flight foes, outclassed in their clashes with the Harvard-Dartmouth-St. Lawrence triumvirate.

When the travel partners visited Bright Hockey Center on the season’s opening weekend in October, Harvard completely dominated, creaming RPI, 11-0, and dispatching Union in a 10-0 final. Sophomore winger Sarah Vaillancourt led the onslaught, notching eight points on three goals and five assists against the Engineers and pouring in four more goals against the Dutchwomen.

The matchups should again be useful for stat-padding, as several of the Crimson’s stars can solidify their places among the nation’s numerical leaders. Most notably, co-captain Julie Chu, a frontrunner for the Patty Kazmaier Award given to the top player in Division I, can bolster her already impressive resume with big numbers against some porous defenses.

“I would hope that they are outstanding,” Stone said of Chu’s chances of capturing the award. “People that understand the game understand what her impact has been in the game this year and, specifically, [on] our team and how she dominates play regardless of the opponent.”

Chu sits atop the D-I leaderboard in points per game, with 12 goals and 29 assists in only 18 outings. Sophomore Jenny Brine is third in the nation in goals and first in power-play strikes, and is likely to add to those figures this weekend.

Game time for both contests is 7 p.m.

—Staff writer Jonathan Lehman can be reached at jlehman@fas.harvard.edu.