The top-ranked Dartmouth Big Green, the regular-season ECAC champions, took a 2-0 lead in the first period over Niagara and never looked back en route to a 3- 1 win, advancing to next weekend’s women’s championship to be held on their own home ice.
“This game was the pressure game,” said Big Green coach Judy Oberting. “Having the tournament here, we wanted to be a part of it, and we wanted to play two games next weekend to get ready for the weekend after. It would have been hard if we didn’t win this game, because we would have been sitting around wondering if we would be asked to the national tournament. This is the game that had all the pressure on it and we handled it well.”
The Big Green took the lead just 3:05 into the first period as Carly Haggard had the puck behind the net. She tried to put it in front, but couldn’t get it there when all of a sudden the puck went in front off of a Niagara defender. The puck went right to Kristin King, who quickly roofed one over Tania Pinelli to make it 1-0.
Later in the first period the Big Green struck again. After getting a pass from Lauren Trottier, Correne Bredin blasted one from the blue line that went straight in. Pinelli could not get over in time as she was tied up in the crease with Jennifer Wiehn. Pinelli argued her case, but the goal stood.
“With the speed that Dartmouth came out with it hurt us,” said Niagara coach Margot Page. “We knew they were going to come out solid with a lot of speed and I think we respected it too much when we started backing away more towards the middle instead of taking the body. They intimidated us with that and we needed to adjust, something we didn’t do until after two periods.”
The Purple Eagles got untracked in the third period on the power play. With the puck thrown in front by Valerie Hall, a mad scramble ensued with Hall, Candice Celeen and Brooke Bradburn. At the end of the scramble it was Bradburn that wound up with the puck and she put it past a sprawled Meghan Cahill to bring the Purple Eagles within one.
But soon thereafter the Big Green would regain the two goal lead as Haggard went down the right wing, cut in front of Pinelli and slid a backhander past her for the 3-1 lead to seal the win.
“It was a two-on-one and the ‘D’ went right to her, and I came across,” said Haggard. “I’ve played against [Pinelli] before and she knew what I was going to do, so, I just kept cutting across and somehow managed to get it in.
“She’s a great goalie and you’re not going to score much on her.”
“We talked about getting them on early, making them feel the pressure and getting a couple early,” said Oberting. “Once we got off to that, I think a lot of them said, ‘Whew,’ and you could see that after that we weren’t playing as hard and with as much confidence. But then when we had to, we finally woke up again and put pressure on the, and Haggard showed up.”
“We couldn’t put the puck in the net, not necessarily because of the goaltending, but because we were looking to pass off rather than shooting the puck to net and trying to capitalize off of that,” said Page. “But we only got a few shots on net in the first two periods, and that’s not going to win you hockey games.”
The last team the Purple Eagles faced in the regular season was the Big Green, and two weeks ago the Purple Eagles handed the Big Green one of only three losses on the season.
“I think we had the toughest game of the tournament,” said Oberting. “They’ve been the giant-killers all year and they really made us work. But because we lost to them earlier, we had to respect them and it was a situation where they knew they had to be ready. And because we just played Niagara and lost, they knew it was going to be tough and we certainly had the tough draw.”
The Purple Eagles end their season at 17-14-4, while Dartmouth (24-3-1) will host the ECAC championships next weekend and await their opponent.
“This was one of the biggest wins we’ve had, and next week hopefully we’ll come out flying again,” said Haggard.
