With a win and a tie on the weekend, Harvard maintained its No. 1 ranking in the USCHO.com Division I Women’s Poll. After a 3-3 tie on Valentine’s Day, the Crimson rebounded for a decisive 6-1 win against No. 6 St. Lawrence. Harvard is also No. 1 in the USCHO.com Parwise Rankings (PWR), a measure of NCAA Tournament selection likelihood.
No. 2 Minnesota-Duluth and No. 3 Minnesota played in two games this weekend, with first place in the WCHA up for grabs. The Gophers were without the services of Patty Kazmaier nominee Krissy Wendell, who is out with a broken clavicle. Duluth won a striking 7-1 victory on Friday, but Minnesota rallied for a 4-2 win on Saturday. The Bulldogs are 3-1 against Minnesota this season.
Dartmouth, which finished at No. 4 in the poll and No. 5 in the PWR, downed Cornell and Colgate in grand style, 9-2 and 8-0 respectively. No. 5 New Hamsphire shutout Maine 3-0 and defeated Niagara 7-1. No. 7 Wisconsin swept St. Cloud State 3-2 and 9-2. No. 8 Providence had a three win week, downing Brown 4-3 before wiping out Quinnipiac twice, 4-1 and 7-1. Mercyhurst, which moved up a spot to No. 9 this week, stopped Niagara 6-3 in its only game of the weekend. No. 10 Princeton dropped after splitting a weekend series with unrated Yale.
Princeton will look to get back on the winning track on Friday against No. 1 Harvard, but faces a difficult task, as the Crimson have not lost since November. This is the last ranked team Harvard has on its regular season schedule.
Just one point apart at the top of the Hockey East standings, No. 5 New Hampshire and No. 8 Providence will meet on Saturday. Finally, No. 9 Mercyhurst will try to improve on a 23-6-1 record and climb in the rankings with a weekend series against No. 4 Dartmouth.
The USCHO.com Poll is compiled by U.S. College Hockey Online, and consists of 15 voters, including 11 coaches of Division I programs and four women’s hockey writers.
The Pairwise Ranking attempts to mimic the method used by the NCAA Selection Committee to determine participants for the NCAA Division I women’s hockey tournament. The PWR compares only those at or above .500, judging them by five criteria: record against common opponents, record in last 16 games, head to head competition, record against other teams at or above .500, and the Ratings Percentage Index (RPI).
The PWR can be reformatted and redistributed by any media outlet or person, provided USCHO’s URL (http://www.uscho.com/) accompanies the results.
