Women’s Ice Hockey Moves One Step Closer to Championship Weekend with a 4-0 Victory in Game One of the ECAC Quarterfinals

With a thorough 4-0 defeat of Yale, Harvard will have the opportunity to punch its ticket to the ECAC semifinals in game two of the best-of-three series tomorrow.

The final scoreline did end with the Crimson in steady control, but the game opened with the teams matching each other’s chances. For most of the first period, each team did stake out decent stretches of zone time and a few good chances, but heading to the locker room scoreless for the first intermission certainly seemed like a likely outcome. Then, however, Harvard managed to turn defense to offense and change the entire flow of the game.

When the Bulldogs threw the puck towards the net with the hope of creating a scoring chance from the point, co-captain and forward Kat Hughes became the catalyst of the counter-attack. The blue-line blast looked to be whizzing past her head, but Hughes made a goalie-like reaction instead, flashing her glove, shoulder, and upper body in general to knock the puck out of the air. After playing it up the boards to herself, the rush was on, and the finishing touches of the ensuing two-on-one would be provided by Becca Gilmore with 5:20 remaining in the first.

“We lost the faceoff, and [we’ve] worked on blocked shots all year,” Gilmore said. “Kat took one I think to the head or shoulder and kept with it. We got some speed, caught them on transition...and Kat made a nice second-effort pass.”

As the game wore on, Gilmore would continue to supply an offensive spark. With the Crimson on the power play in the second period, the five-on-four advantage looked to be going to waste as Bulldogs sophomore forward Rebecca Vanstone prepared to return from the penalty box. Nonetheless, with just seconds left on the power play, sophomore defender Maryna Macdonald fired the puck on net from the point. Gilmore would make sure to take advantage of the opportunity. Jockeying for position just outside the goal crease, Gilmore cemented herself directly in front of Yale junior goaltender Gianna Meloni, taking away her eyes with the screen and then also getting a piece of the Macdonald blast for a deflection goal.

“We got the puck in deep [and] got it to the point,” Gilmore said. “Again, we’ve heard all year to get to the net. So I went in for a screen and was able to tip the puck.”

Later in the middle stanza, Gilmore capped her three-point affair with a feed to sophomore forward Kristin Della Rovere. Upon receiving the pass, Della Rovere would cut laterally across Meloni before tucking the backhand finish five-hole to solidify the Crimson’s 3-0 lead. And three goals ended up being more than enough for Harvard to get the win given the play of the defense and sophomore goalie Lindsay Reed. Despite being the Crimson’s primary starter last season and through January of this year, Reed had not started a game since Jan. 25 due to injury. She had dressed in games in February but ultimately did not go until tonight, but she was ready.

“It was awesome to get a fresh start—I was really excited,” Reed said. “Getting the start is a huge deal, and to have it on home ice, it was incredible.”

Despite limited action in the first period—only seeing five shots—Reed did not seem to show signs of rust. After making a stick save through traffic in the final seconds of the first, Reed set the tone game for the rest of the game, i.e. later adding a couple of backdoor butterfly-slide kick saves. By the time the buzzer had struck triple zeroes, Reed had registered 27 saves on 27 shots, crediting her success to her ability to decompose the game into smaller segments.

“I just took it in chunks—like five-minute chunks. Just win those five minutes,” Reed said. “And then when we were down on the [penalty kill], win each minute and keep getting stronger throughout the game.”

The defensive effort, however, was a holistic one as the Harvard defenders managed to funnel many Yale chances to the outside and protect Harvard’s shots-on-goal advantage until the final stages of the third. As Reed alluded, the penalty kill was critical to the defensive display. In the second period, the Crimson faced three Yale power-play opportunities and killed all of them. In fact, the Della Rovere goal came just 15 seconds after burning off Yale’s second power-play chance.

“We stayed calm [on the penalty kill],” Gilmore said. “Obviously we know we have a great goaltender backing us up in there, so we’re able to be aggressive. I think we did a really good job not running around but attacking them when we can and not giving them any time and space.”

As the game entered the third, Harvard sought to maintain its lead and play conservatively, scaling back the offense somewhat with only seven shots on goal in the last period. Reed also contributed 12 saves in the final stanza. Ultimately, the Bulldogs would pull Meloni for the six-on-five, but sophomore forward Anne Bloomer made Yale pay for the decision, adding an empty-netter from the neutral zone with just 23 ticks left to ice the Crimson’s 4-0 victory.

Harvard will have the opportunity to sweep Yale and compete in ECAC championship weekend for the first time since 2015, but the Crimson knows that the Bulldogs will be playing in desperation mode.

“We have to know that they’re going to be fighting for their lives—keep calm because it could be a high-energy game,” Reed said. “We want to avoid penalties, just stay cool, play our own game, and bury the puck.”

With the sub-24 hour turnaround, the puck drops tomorrow at 3:00 p.m. at Bright-Landry Hockey Center.

— Staff writer William Boggs can be reached at william.boggs@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @BoggsTHC.