Women's Hockey: Year ends as Harvard wins twice

With its season having ended earlier than it would have liked, the women’s hockey team came home after a disappointing weekend at No. 4 Harvard in the first weekend of the ECAC quarterfinals.

Princeton (13-14-4 overall, 11-7-4 ECAC Hockey) finished its season with two consecutive losses against the No. 3 Crimson (20-6-5, 13-6-3) in Cambridge, Mass., this weekend. The Tigers posted a 5-1 loss on Friday and a 4-1 loss on Saturday.

While the Tigers have traditionally outshot their opponents this season, they were definitely missing that aspect of the game this weekend. In the first game, Harvard outshot Princeton 38-17, and it was no closer in the second game, with a 23-shot difference.

“We needed to get more shots on net,” junior defender Sasha Sherry said. “Harvard dominated us in that category.”

Princeton did not have a significant number of penalties compared to Harvard in either game. The Tigers, however, had difficulty capitalizing on any of their power plays.

“Our power play was shut down very effectively by Harvard,” Sherry said. “That had a big influence on our lack of success because we had many power-play opportunities but were unable to get many shots on net ... Usually we can count on more than one power-play goal in a weekend to help us out on the scoreboard.”

The Crimson notched a total of 23 power-play shots in both games.

For the Tigers, this was a tough weekend and a difficult end to the season. They were motivated to beat Harvard on their own ice and went into the game with a lot of heart. But it seemed as if they lost their determination sometime during the weekend.

“We also lacked the go-get-it attitude,” Sherry said. “We were playing hard, but at times we didn’t seem to have a purpose.”

Princeton allowed the Crimson to jump out to commanding leads in both games, which made its task that much more difficult.

In game one of the playoff series, Harvard got off to a blistering start. Five goals were scored in the first period, four of them by Crimson players.

Junior defender Laura Martingale salvaged a goal on the power play as the first period came to a close, with assists going to Sherry and sophomore forward Paula Romanchuk. Still, the Tigers had dug themselves a deep hole at that point, as they trailed 4-1.

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Harvard scored one more goal in the second period to push its lead to four, and neither team would find the net in the third period.

On Saturday night, Princeton did a better job of stemming the tide initially, but the Crimson would not be denied.

Harvard still managed to take an early lead when forward Kate Buesser scored eight minutes, 32 seconds into the first period. But Harvard went on to score two more in the second period. The Tigers finally got on the board senior forward Melanie Wallace scored, unassisted, shortly after the Crimson had taken a 3-0 lead, but that was as close as Princeton would get.

With its many shots on goal and all of its power-play goal attempts, it is clear that Harvard turned the speed up this weekend. This proved to be difficult for the Tigers, and they could not shut down the Crimson’s strong fore-check.

“They also had fast transitions,” Sherry said. “The speed of the game picked up from the regular season, and as a group, we were the slower team.”

Sherry noted that the Tigers’ season had its ups and downs.

“This season was a rough one. We were more inconsistent than ever before. We beat some good teams and lost to some poor teams. In the end, playoffs are the only thing that really matters,” Sherry said. “We were beat very decisively this weekend, and it is a very hard pill to swallow. We have nothing to show for our efforts. It will not be hard to locate areas to improve on as individuals and as a group.”