AMOR PERFECT UNION: Voters Make Perfect Choice

DULUTH, Minn.—As I sat down at Table No. 22 way in the back of the Radisson Hotel Duluth-Harborview’s banquet hall March 21, I was already formulating the first lines of this column.

I was going to write about how the Patty Kazmaier Award Selection Committee screwed over Harvard junior forward Sarah Vaillancourt, how it held against her the fact that a Harvard player had already won five of the 10 awards given out, how it gave way too much weight to Mercyhurst’s Meghan Agosta’s inflated goal totals, or how it exhibited an obvious pro-Sweden bias in voting for Minnesota-Duluth’s Kim Martin, a Stockholm native (alright, maybe not that one).

In any case, the entire premise for my story was ruined when the results of the balloting (independently tabulated by Pricewaterhouse Coopers LLP—phew!) were announced. The winner of the Kazmaier Award, given annually to the best player in women’s college hockey, was...Sarah Vaillancourt.

With my plan to write a jaded, pessimistic piece foiled by the competence of the Selection Committee, I am left only to put my two cents in about why it made the right choice.

First off, let’s briefly go over Vaillancourt’s competition.

Agosta, a sophomore forward, is a flat out scoring machine and an argument could be made that she has the most natural talent of the three finalists. She led the nation with 1.21 goals per game, scoring 60 points in total.

The sophomore also tallied a ridiculous seven shorthanded goals, which means she has no problem getting around multiple defenders, and against weaker opponents she can pretty much score at will.

Martin, a sophomore goalie, was near the top of the nation in almost every statistical goaltending category despite playing in the WHCA, the toughest conference in the NCAA. She posted a 1.49 goals against average and a .947 save percentage.

A testament to Martin’s talent is her performance in March 20th’s NCAA Frozen Four semifinals matchup with UNH. In the game, the Bulldogs were outshot 41-12 by the Wildcats, but Martin made 39 saves to keep her team in the game and allow Minnesota-Duluth to take a 3-2 victory.

Both players obviously have outstanding credentials, but neither skater matches up to Vaillancourt.

Vaillancourt spent her first two years at Harvard as the incredibly talented but often reckless goal-scorer who was far from a force defensively and benefited greatly from the presence of playmaking veterans like Julie Chu ’07 who would set up quite a few of her scoring opportunities.

But after Chu graduated last June, it was on the shoulders of Vaillancourt to take the helm of the Crimson offense, and the Sherbrooke, Que. native responded by becoming the most complete player in the nation and leading Harvard to a 32-2-0 record, No. 1 in the national rankings, and another Frozen Four appearance.

Until Harvard lost to Wisconsin in the Frozen Four semifinals on March 20, Vaillancourt was the best player on the best team in the country, “the most significant reason [Harvard had] played as well as it [had],” as Crimson coach Katey Stone said in the Patty Kazmaier Award program.

She ranked fifth in the NCAA with 1.82 points per game and third with 1.06 assists per game, and the only reason she didn’t rank higher was because she did exactly what her team needed her to do to win—instead of frantically trying to create scoring chances out of nowhere to pad her stats.

When Harvard was on the power play, Vaillancourt would set up near the blueline, where she would wait with uncanny patience and laser a pass through traffic to an open teammate that only someone with her vision could see.

When the Crimson was down by a goal late in the game and nothing it did seemed to be working, Vaillancourt would make seemingly impossible moves as she danced around defenders before slipping the puck past a helpless goalie. When Harvard was a player down, Vaillancourt would channel her inner defenseman and lock down her opponent’s scoring threats until the penalty was killed.

Sure, you can talk about Agosta’s nation-leading goal totals, but then you also have to talk about how she played in the incredibly weak CHA conference as well as about her startling low number of assists (25), which indicates one of two things:—either she hogged the puck or she was the only real scoring threat on the ice.

Sure, you can talk about Martin’s outstanding numbers in a brutally tough division, but then you also have to talk about how before her incredible performance against UNH on March 20 she gave up four goals in two consecutive playoff games and had to rely on her offense to bail her out.

With all due respect to Agosta and Martin—and each of them is due a lot—no player was more integral to her team’s success this season than Vaillancourt, and even if her not getting the award would have made for better writing material, her getting it, deservingly, is so much more gratifying.

—Staff writer Loren Amor can be reached at lamor@fas.harvard.edu.