Women's hockey splits final weekend but still misses playoffs

Going into this weekend's games, the Princeton women's hockey team still had an outside chance at advancing to the playoffs.

If the Tigers could win both of their games, and if Providence lost both of its contests, the Tigers would tie the Friars for the eighth and final playoff position with 21 points — a tie which would still give Princeton a chance to make the Eastern College Athletic Con-ference playoffs. The two largest challenges to this master plan, however, were that Providence had to lose to Boston College — a team which had won only two of 24 league games — and Princeton needed to beat St. Lawrence, which stood at third place in the conference.

Nevertheless, the Tigers (13-13-3 overall, 8-13-3 ECAC) went north with an air of confidence, knowing that they had the ability to beat both the Saints and Saturday's opponent, Cornell.

"I think we were optimistic," junior defender Aviva Grumet-Morris said. "We were upbeat and looking forward to the weekend."

Princeton first took on the Big Red (10-18-1, 7-16-1), a team resting in eleventh place in the ECAC with no playoff hopes.

Although Princeton gave up the first goal 15 minutes into the game, it went on to score five unanswered goals by the end of the second period.

"We get goals in bunches. We've been like that all year," Grumet-Morris said. "We feel as though the first goal gives us a boost of confidence and if we can get a few more shots, then we'll be able to get a few more goals."

Freshman forward Gretchen Anderson began the onslaught with a goal 18 minutes, 49 seconds into the game. Two goals by junior forward Andrea Kilbourne and then another goal each from senior forward Abbey Fox and junior defenseman Wanda Mason put the Tigers up by four at the end of the second period of play.

Though Cornell scored an early goal in the third, the Tigers were able to keep the Big Red from mounting a rally and came away with a 5-2 victory.

Thus, with a Princeton win and Providence's defeat at the hands of Dartmouth, Princeton came one step closer to making the playoffs. Now the Tigers only had to come out with a win against St. Lawrence, which was not an impossible feat for a suddenly hot Princeton team.

"We went into that game fully confident and expected to win," Grumet-Morris said.

Although Princeton gave up the first goal of the game only 3:36 into the first period, Fox countered in the beginning of the second period with assists from Kilbourne and Grumet-Morris.

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"After she got that goal, it definitely inspired us and definitely pumped us up," Anderson said.

"I thought we were going to win," Grumet-Morris said. "We had a number of really good chances."

Indeed, the Princeton attackers came away in the second period with a total of 10 shots to only three for the Saints.

Once the third period began, however, St. Lawrence was able to find a way to get the puck past freshman goalie Megan Van Beusekom and score two goals within the first two minutes of the third to put the Saints up 3-1.

Princeton, still breathing, was able to counter with a power-play goal from Fox, but would not be able to get another goal past St. Lawrence and would fall to a final score of 3-2.

"That game was typical of our season where we would play very hard for almost 60 minutes and then fall behind," Anderson said.

Although they did not make the playoffs, the Tigers had some bright spots left over from the season including the victory over Harvard and strong showings against league-leading Dartmouth.