Women's Hockey Fighting For Home Ice in Final ECAC Weekend

In a season-defining weekend, the Harvard women’s hockey team (15-9-3, 11-6-3 ECAC) will finish its regular season play on the road as the team travels to play ECAC foes No. 10/10 Colgate (19-6-7, 11-4-5) and Cornell (11-12-4, 7-9-4).

The results this weekend will go a long way in deciding the Crimson’s–currently fifth in the ECAC standings–playoff fate. The top four teams in the ECAC at the end of the regular season obtain home ice for the conference quarterfinals and avoid playing an extra, partial octofinals series.

“Home ice is so important,” sophomore defenseman Chelsea Ziadie said. “No matter where we play we will obviously bring our best but being at home is familiar and it’s special. Playing at home is special and it’s something every team wants and it’s something we want going into the playoffs."

Harvard opens up the weekend playing against a confident Colgate team that is currently two points ahead of the Crimson in fourth place in the ECAC.

Though Harvard boasts a 14-game-winning streak against the Raiders, including a 6-2 rout at home earlier this season, Colgate comes into the clash on a three-game winning streak including a 3-2 win over ECAC leader No. 4/4 Quinnipiac, handing the Bobcats just their second loss of the season.

The Crimson will look to junior forward Sydney Daniels, the reigning ECAC Player of the Week, to get the offense going against a Raider defense allowing over two goals a game. The Southwick, Mass. native leads Harvard with 15 goals and has tallied eight in her last seven matches including a pair against Union last weekend.

The first line has been potent for the Crimson of late, tallying 17 of its last 21 points. While the starters have driven Harvard’s success, the depth of the team is still an important factor and advantage. With various changes in the lineup throughout the season, the Crimson has managed to adapt accordingly while maintaining a strong rhythm.

“We’ve had changes in the lineup all throughout the season,” Ziadie said. “We’ve had injuries, we’ve had people come in and sit out. It’s really a matter of every player not only accepting their roles but knowing their role can change any minute and fill the role that needs to be filled come game time.”

On the other end, co-captain and goaltender Emerance Maschmeyer and the Harvard blue line will look to carry their momentum from last week, when they conceded only one goal in 125 minutes of action, against a Colgate offense averaging three goals per game.

One of the biggest tasks for the blue line will be to maintain pressure on the Raiders’ attackers to make sure the opposing offense is kept at bay and shots are minimized.

“We’ve worked on getting a little bit grittier in front of our net, picking up sticks, that’s really key,” freshman defenseman Kate Hallett said. “It’s one thing to be in front of the net but it’s another thing to be in front of the net and have a stick up on one of their players.”

In its second game of the weekend, Harvard will look to ruin ECAC and Ivy League foe Cornell’s Senior Night as it takes on the Big Red at Lynah Rink.

Like Colgate, Cornell comes into the matchup on a winning streak, picking up a pair of 4-2 victories against Yale and Brown. The Crimson has a four-game winning streak against the Big Red and shut it out, 2-0, when it traveled to Cambridge earlier this season.

Statistically, Cornell comes in ranked in the bottom half of the conference on both sides of the rink. The Big Red concede an average of 2.73 goals per game while averaging just 2.44 scores, tied with the Crimson for seventh in the ECAC.

As Harvard continues its fight for home ice, Cornell’s record against teams in the top half of the conference bodes well for the Crimson. In 11 tries this season, the Big Red has only been able to claim one win, a 2-1 victory over then-No. 10/10 Princeton, against the top six teams in the ECAC.

While Harvard is confident in its ability to beat Cornell, and is arguably the favorite to come away with the result, the team will make sure not to overlook a Big Red that will likely come out with a fight on its Senior Night.

“Every single game there’s a target on your back,” Hallett said. “There’s no team in this league that you can look past, especially come playoff time, so every single team we match up [against] will get our very best, a hundred percent of the time, no matter their rankings, no matter past games, no matter our rankings, every single game is huge from here on out.”

-Staff writer Julio Fierro can be reached at julio.fierro@thecrimson.com.