Women's Hockey Ties with BU, 1-1

The buzzer beat them to it.

As the No. 6 Harvard women’s ice hockey team took traveled crosstown to No. 7 Boston University on Friday night, a staunch Terriers defense kept the Crimson from sealing a win in the 60 minutes of regulation play or five minutes of overtime. The 1-1 result was the second tie of the season for Harvard.

“Their first line is about as good as anything we’re going to see this year,” junior forward Miye D’Oench said. “Shutting them down is not easy, and on top of that, to get offense going is even harder.”

It took player-advantage situations for both BU (8-3-2, 5-2-0 WHEA) and the Crimson (2-1-2, 2-1-0 ECAC) to put points on the board. Harvard’s only goal of the night was netted by D’Oench, who said her score was an early look at her team’s power play potential.

“We haven’t really gotten too many power play opportunities this season so it was nice to get a goal early and especially nice to get a power play goal early,” D’Oench said.

As Terriers sophomore forward Maddie Elia was called for checking just over six minutes into the first frame, the Crimson capitalized on the five-on-four situation. D’Oench, who has scored six goals through the first five games of the season and had a team-high of four shots this game, took a handoff from co-captain Samantha Reber and junior co-captain Michelle Picard, to get the puck past BU goalie Victoria Hanson.

The Crimson would have no such luck between the pipes for the rest of the contest, as the Terriers defense held Harvard to just 17 total shots on goal.

At the other end of the ice, junior goalkeeper Emerance Maschmeyer scrambled for 34 saves over the night.

A consistent BU offense anchored by center Marie-Philip Poulin, a front-liner who has twice scored Olympic game winners for Canada that have sent the United States home with a silver medal, sent 35 shots on goal but saw its sole goal of the night come on one of four power play opportunities.

Poulin was crucial at the face-off circle, winning 13 of her 19 attempts, and contributed four shots. However, it was her teammate Samantha Sutherland, a sophomore forward, who netted the game-tying goal. After Sutherland’s score halfway through the middle period, neither team would be able to set off the goal light for the rest of the matchup.

It was the third-straight overtime contest for the Crimson, and yet another game in which the line arrangements saw some amount of change. With an expanded roster and a plethora of talent, Harvard has yet to find the exact formula for success.

“Naturally we have a big team so things are going to be a little bit different,” senior forward Lyndsey Fry said. “At the same time we’re still trying to figure things out. No lines have been the same for any of the games we have played just far so we’re still trying to figure that out and the coaches are still trying to find the perfect mix of people.”

—Staff writer Cordelia F. Mendez can be reached at cordelia.mendez@thecrimson.com.