It was tough to tell which was the bigger game for women's hockey on this weekend's road trip. On Friday, tenth-ranked Princeton took on the No. 1 team in the nation. Pretty big. On Saturday the Tigers took on the team chasing them for home ice in the first round of the Eastern College Athletic Conference playoffs. Also pretty big.
Princeton (16-8-2 overall, 9-5-0 ECAC) settled for one out of two, falling, 4-1, to top-ranked Harvard but dominating its pursuer, Brown (10-11-4, 7-5-1), in a 5-2 victory.
The near-perfect team
The Crimson (23-1-1, 12-0-1) hosted Friday night's affair with only a scratch and a smudge on its near-perfect record, and Harvard's Jennifer Botterill made sure it stayed that way, scoring two goals and two assists in the easy win.
The country's best made its point early as the Crimson scored two first-period goals to send the Tigers scrambling early. Botterill netted her first goal six minutes, five seconds into the game. Lauren McAuliffe threaded a pass to freshman phenom Julie Chu, who found Botterill sneaking into the crease. Chu made it 2-0 on a power play at 16:06 when Botterill deflected a rebound off of Angela Ruggiero's slap shot over to the left post where Chu was waiting.
Still breathing, Princeton knew one goal would get them back in the game. The problem was that the next goal was Harvard's. Botterill took advantage of a power play chance and scored just 2:39 into the second.
Things got worse for the Tigers in the third. After keeping the Crimson out of the net for most of the period, McAuliffe finally found daylight at 17:50 to push the Harvard lead to 4-0. Botterill and Chu assisted on the play, each adding another point to their lofty season totals — now 84 and 68, respectively.
Princeton junior forward Gretchen Anderson made sure to give the team something to be pleased about when she broke up the shutout at 18:36.
A chain is only as strong . . .
"Their goalie is their weak link," senior forward Nikola Holmes said. "We just didn't capitalize on our opportunities."
The weak link in question —Jessica Ruddock — made 18 saves for the victorious Crimson. Junior Megan Van Beusekom stopped 37 shots for Princeton in the loss.
"They have such skilled players at getting the puck in the net," senior forward Nikola Holmes said. "After 42 shots on net, Megan was going to let a few in."
Botterill became Harvard's all-time leading scorer in the game, raising her four-year total to 309 points.
"They are an amazing team," Holmes said, "but we can skate with them. If we get the puck to the goalie, we have a chance."
The loss was soon a memory as the Tigers headed for Providence to take on the Bears, just one point behind Princeton going into the game for the last first-round home-ice position.
The Tigers erupted for a four-goal first period, cruised to a 5-2 win, and left little doubt who deserves that fourth-seed in the conference tournament.
"After we worked our asses off and didn't win, we were frustrated," Holmes said. "We did not want to deal with that again. We wanted to win this game."
Sophomore forward April Brown could not wait to get Princeton rolling again, scoring just 1:41 into the game off an assist from Anderson.
Later, senior forward Andrea Kilbourne, the team's leading scorer, notched her 15th goal of the year off a pass from sophomore defender Katharine Maglione.
Anderson scored her 14th goal of the season shorthanded at 10:20, and sophomore forward Becky Stewart followed suit with another shorthanded goal at 16:41.
But the Tigers were not done. Less than a minute into the second period, senior forward Annamarie Holmes threw a little salt on the Brown wounds courtesy of assists from Anderson and Nikola Holmes.
The Bears' scored twice near the midway mark of the third, but it was not enough.
Van Beusekom made 17 saves on 19 shots to earn her 10th victory of the season despite seeing her team out-shot in every period.
"Near the end, we broke down defensively," Nikola Holmes said. "We were tired. Fortunately, we only gave up two goals."
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