Women's Hockey Trounces Colgate, 4-0

Coming off a 2-0 loss to No. 3 Cornell, the No. 9 Harvard women’s hockey team showed no mercy to Colgate (8-15-1, 3-9-1 ECAC) on Saturday evening, beating the Raiders, 4-0, in a penalty-ridden matchup.

The Crimson (11-6-1, 8-4-1 ECAC) began the game slow, making unprompted mistakes and having trouble keeping control of the puck. But Harvard found a way to score at the end of the first frame and maintained its lead before dominating the third period, scoring three more goals to seal the win.

Off to a lethargic start, the Crimson looked nothing like it did the night before in the fast-paced, high-level battle between two top-10 teams.

“We started off not really ourselves,” sophomore wing Lyndsey Fry said. “We definitely wanted to go into today’s game with a lot of momentum and carry it from last game, but we didn’t quite do that how we wanted to.”

“Today the timing was slower; the pace was slower,” Harvard coach Katey Stone added. “I thought we were off a lot, and we didn’t set the tone. We didn’t make things happen early on—we just kind of waited for them to happen, and that’s really not our game.”

With the score still in a stalemate, Colgate’s freshman center Taylor Craig found herself behind the Crimson defense on a breakaway. With Harvard defenders close on her heels, Craig managed a slap shot that threatened to give the Raiders the first lead of the game, but junior goaltender Laura Bellamy deflected the puck over the top of the goal, one of her 31 saves on the evening.

Showing the colors of a nationally-ranked squad, the Crimson found a way to get control of the game, putting the puck in the back of the net before the first period came to a close.

With less than two minutes remaining before the first break, sophomore defenseman Marissa Gedman shifted around a Colgate player, skated down the right sideline, and rocketed a shot at the Raiders’ goaltender Kimberly Sass. Sass made the save, but the puck lingered around the goal until it found its way to the stick of Fry, who redirected it over the goal line.

Though the middle frame recorded no goals, Harvard had its chances.

Midway through the period, rookie wing Hillary Crowe scooped the puck up and danced around a stunned Colgate defender before she sent a powerful shot towards Sass. But a block from Sass kept the Crimson just one goal ahead, and the score remained 1-0 going into the second intermission.

While the second period resulted in no scoring, the Crimson seemed to gain the momentum with the start of the third period, as Harvard notched back-to-back goals within the first minute of play.

The scoring frenzy began when junior center Jillian Dempsey passed the puck from behind the goal to sophomore wing Gina McDonald, who was waiting right on top of the goal crease. McDonald hit a no-nonsense shot straight past Sass to give the Crimson a 2-0 lead.

Before the announcer could finish giving McDonald credit for her goal, Dempsey took hold of the puck and raced down the right side of the ice, cutting around the only Raiders’ player in her way. But as she moved around the defender, she slipped and fell to the ice as she cranked out a shot which still flew past the Raider netminder for the score.

Nine minutes later, the Crimson struck again. With an opponent on her heels, Fry intercepted a Colgate pass, transitioning to the attack as junior defenseman Josephine Pucci skated with her. In a 2-on-2 opportunity, Fry passed to her teammate, and Pucci tucked one more tally in before the end of the game.

Despite the four goals, Harvard struggled on the power play.  In 14 power plays, the Crimson was never able to capitalize on its man-up opportunities.

But the slow start and the weak power play didn’t matter in the end, as the Harvard offense found its form and overpowered the visitors in the game’s final frame.

“It was a different game entirely [from Friday night]—different team, different group of refs. You never wanna blame it on reffing, but it definitely can change the way a game works and how it goes, so we had to work out some obstacles,” Fry said. “But by the end there, we were running on all cylinders.”

—Staff writer Taryn I. Kurcz be reached at tkurcz13@college.harvard.edu.