Women's Ice Hockey: Home ice will be at stake for Princeton

Though the team is not in danger of missing the ECAC playoffs, it would like to secure home-ice advantage in the quarterfinals by finishing the season in the top four. The Tigers currently sit in fifth place, one point behind Colgate. Two wins this weekend would catapult the team into fourth place.

“[Colgate and Cornell] are both very explosive teams,” head coach Jeff Kampersal ’92 said. “We have no choice but to fight for our lives.”

On Friday, the Tigers will face off against Colgate (15-9-3, 9-4-3), which defeated Princeton 3-1 in November. The Red Raiders are led by defender Kiira Dosdall, who is a potential candidate for the Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award, given annually to the best overall women’s college hockey player. As expected, Dosdall’s statistics live up to the billing. She has 23 points on the season, while the next-closest defender on her team has only 15. Dosdall knows where and when to pass the puck: Of her 23 points, 19 are assists, putting her third in the league in that category.

“We expect from them what we would see from any other teams in our league,” senior goalie Kristen Young said. “They have some very good offense. Every team has one or two star players, but it’s not like they’re any better than any other team we’ve played recently.”

The Raiders have four players — one of them Dosdall — with more than 10 goals on the season, while Princeton has none. The other three players — forwards Sam Hunt, Katie Stewart and Evan Kinnick — will be dangerous on the ice, and the Tigers will look to limit their scoring opportunities.

“Colgate has some of the better offensive players in our league,” Kampersal said. “There will be a lot of shots both ways. When we played Colgate last time we turned the puck over a bit too much.”

To finish off the weekend, Princeton will play Ivy League rival Cornell on Saturday afternoon. In November, the Tigers crushed the Big Red, 6-3, but this time around Cornell will be much more formidable. The Big Red is a very young team led by two underclassman forwards, sophomore Rebecca Johnston and freshman Catherine White. Johnston leads the team with 16 goals and is second on the team with 14 assists; this is impressive considering Johnston’s absence from five of the 22 games Cornell has played this season. White has 12 goals, second on the team only to Johnston, and 15 assists on the season. The two stars make a fairly impressive tandem, as they have combined for 57 points this season.

“Cornell has players in their lineup that we didn’t see the first time we played them,” Kampersal said.

Since the end of exams, Princeton has focused on its power play. Lately the Tigers have failed to convert in man-advantage situations, and these miscues have come back to haunt them later in games. In the loss to Brown last weekend, for example, Princeton failed to convert on any of its five power plays. If the Tigers could have converted on one or two of its power plays, the game’s outcome might have been very different.

“The Brown loss really knocked us back to reality,” Kampersal said. “Our power play needs to get better. Everyone needs to do their job.”

For Princeton, each of the remaining regular-season games will have the feel of a playoff game. They will determine their seeding in the playoffs, and the team will need to power through the end of the regular season. They will have to bounce back from the Brown game in order to be ready for the playoffs.

“Obviously [the Brown loss] was a frustrating loss, but we worked it out,” Young said. “You’ve got to get over it … and get back on the horse. We can’t let a loss like that break our back.”