Women's Hockey: Games at Brown, Yale conclude regular season

The matchups against Brown (2-22-3, 1-16-3) and Yale (8-16-13, 7-11-2) may be pivotal for the Tigers’ playoff success. The top four teams get home-ice advantage, and the Tigers, ranked fifth, are just one point behind Quinnipiac.

Tying Quinnipiac (20-10-2, 12-8) in points would still leave the Tigers in fifth, so they will need to overtake the Bobcats if they want to play at Baker Rink next weekend. Princeton plays better at home than away, as its 9-4-1 home record compared to a 5-8 road performance confirms.

Oddly enough, the Tigers will need help from the Bears or the Bulldogs if they want a first-round home game, as the two teams will be squaring off against the Bobcats this weekend as well. Unfortunately for Princeton, Quinnipiac has not had trouble against Brown or Yale, the teams with the second and third-worst records in the conference, respectively.

The Bobcats posted a 4-0 shutout over the Bears earlier in the year and also took down the Bulldogs twice, winning 2-1 and 3-1 in a one-week span.

The last time Princeton faced these two teams came at a major turning point in the season. The Tigers fell 2-1 in a home game on Dec. 3 to the Bulldogs in their final loss of a seven-game winless streak. The next day, the Tigers shut out Brown, 4-0, their second shutout of the year and their first victory of an eight-game winning streak.

Since the streak ended on Jan. 29 in a 2-3 loss against Clarkson, the Tigers have won three of their last four games, including a 3-2 win on the road against No. 10 Harvard.

The Tigers are fourth best in the conference in goals allowed, while the Bears and Bulldogs are in the bottom three in scoring.

The Tigers are favored against Brown, which is on a 13-game losing skid, and against Yale, which has lost two of its last three games. However, senior defender and co-captain Sasha Sherry said she is not underestimating either team.

“Brown is a really tough and hardworking team. Our games against them are always close, and they can definitely go either way,” said Sherry, who recorded a hat trick in the Tigers’ most recent win, a 4-2 victory over Rensselaer at Baker Rink in the team’s home finale. “Yale beat us earlier this year, so we definitely have revenge on our minds. They have a handful of extremely talented forwards that we need to watch out for.”

The Tigers are looking to pick up some momentum heading into the playoffs. Though they would love to return home for the playoffs, they are trying to not get too concerned with how Quinnipiac’s matchups will turn out.

“We just need to worry about one game at a time and not be worried about what happens with the other teams,” Sherry said. “We are in the playoffs regardless, so however this weekend turns out we need to be ready to play any team in any location.”

While Princeton has qualified for the ECAC Championship tournament for 10 years in a row, it has failed to emerge from the first round in the past four years.

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The team’s three seniors, forward Caroline Park, defender Laura Martindale and Sherry, have experienced this failure firsthand and said they hope to finally break into the semifinals.

“We have lost in the first round of the playoffs every year I have been here so far, so it would be nice to end my career at Princeton with some improvement in our post-season performance,” Sherry said.

The puck drops in Providence, R.I., at 7 p.m. Friday night. Princeton will take on Yale at 4 p.m. the following afternoon.