No. 9/9 Women's Hockey Stops Short Skid, Sweeps Weekend

The No. 9/9 Harvard women’s ice hockey team started off 2016 strong this weekend with two wins on home ice.

The Crimson was coming off of a low note at the end of 2015, having closed out the first half of its season with overtime losses to Quinnipiac and Princeton. Harvard was able to set a new tone for 2016 in this weekend’s matchups.

HARVARD 6, COLGATE 2

Facing off against No. 10/- Colgate (11-4-6, 3-2-4 ECAC) on Saturday afternoon for the first of two meetings slated this season, the Crimson (10-4-1, 7-3-1) had its offense running on all cylinders.

“I think that we were relentless today,” sophomore defenseman Chelsea Ziadie said. “It didn’t matter if we had one goal or five goals, we were still going after the puck no matter what and I think that’s something that really helped us today offensively.”

This was the first time in the past 29 meetings between the two teams that both sides came into the face off as ranked.

Harvard went down early in the first period when Raider forward Megan Sullivan snuck the puck past senior goalie Emerance Maschmeyer 72 seconds into the game. The lead stood strong for the majority of the period until senior forward Miye D’Oench tied the game with the help of Ziadie and sophomore forward Lexie Laing. D’Oench took the shot from the top of the ice and the puck found the back of the net off of a deflection.

The Crimson dominated the offensive boards in the second period, taking the lead with goals from freshmen defensemen Kate Hallett and Kaitlin Tse. This was Tse’s first goal of the semester and the second for Hallett.

“It’s always great when you have contributors from all four grades and from all the lines and everyone came out tonight,” D’Oench said. “You’re a much stronger team when you have that. You can’t only depend on your veterans and I think tonight was a huge confidence booster for the younger kids.”

The scoring kept coming for Harvard late into the third period. Junior forward Sydney Daniels and sophomore forward Karly Heffernan each tacked a goal onto the scoreboard, with assists coming from D’Oench, Laing, and freshman forward Grace Zarzecki.

Colgate was able to score on Maschmeyer late in the period, but the Crimson retaliated less than 30 seconds later with a goal of its own from D’Oench to wrap up the scoring for the evening. Through 15 games, D’Oench leads the team in goals and assists with 10 and 11, respectively.

HARVARD 2, CORNELL 0

After more than a month off the ice, the team faced off against Ivy League opponent Cornell (7-7-2, 3-4-2 Ivy) Friday night for a 2-0 win.

“It’s always tough coming back from winter break and not having played together after awhile, but we had a very hard week of practice to get back into game shape and I think that reflected really well this weekend,” D’Oench said.

The Crimson was able to capitalize off of a Big Red checking penalty early in the first period, as Zarzecki scored on a power play at the 17:53 mark of the opening frame. Zarzecki fielded a pass to the short side of the goal, trickling the puck past the defender. Thus far this season Zarzecki has seen time in all 15 of Harvard’s games, racking up six goals and three assists in her rookie campaign. Friday’s goal was her second power play tally of the season.

Contrasting first year experience with veteran ice time, Maschmeyer was a force in net, recording her fourth shut out of the season against Cornell, upping her save percentage to .958. During the course of the game, Maschmeyer held up the Big Red’s 23 shots on goal, moving her within 21 shots of taking the Crimson’s all time career save record.

“Emerance played really well and I think one of our team goals we are working [toward improving] is scoring and I think we were able to work on that during this game while we were able to do very well defensively as well,” Ziadie said.

Harvard’s second scoring effort came from Laing. With a minute and five seconds left in the contest, Laing got help from Daniels and D’Oench to hurdle the puck past Cornell goalie Marlen Boissonnault.

This was the Crimson’s first shut out since its Nov. 24 match up against Northeastern.

“The shut out was a testament to our whole team defense,” senior captain Michelle Picard said. “It was good to see our team come together and put out a full team effort.”

—Staff writer Ariel Smolik-Valles can be reached at ariel.smolik-valles@thecrimson.com.