HAMDEN, Conn. — Mary Parker’s goal midway through the third period was enough to salvage a 2-2 for the No. 3/5 Harvard Crimson against the No. 9 Quinnipiac Bobcats Saturday evening at the High Point Solutions Arena.
“It’s a little frustrating; we’ve lost I think at least four wins with tying goals in the last 10 minutes, so it is what it is,” Quinnipiac coach Rick Seeley said.
At the 8:48 mark of the third, Parker found the puck in the crease and was just able to tap it past Quinnipiac goaltender Chelsea Laden to tie the game for good.
“It gave us the confidence we needed to keep that game tight; obviously we were chasing them the whole time and it was great to get the goal late,” Harvard interim coach Maura Crowell. “It made it pretty exciting down the stretch.”
That confidence proved to be crucial, as both Brianalin Mastel and Dylanne Crugnale were whistled for penalties with 3:32 remaining in the third period that put Quinnipiac on a five-on-three power play.
“I think if you look at our stats, we’ve been down a man quite a bit,” Crowell said. “Five-on-three for two minutes in that pressure situation hasn’t happened yet, but I think they just played with confidence and got it done luckily,”
Quinnipiac managed just three shots on the five-on-three and couldn’t take the lead.
“It was probably my fault; the last two weeks we changed our power play so we haven’t worked a lot on the five-on-three,” Seeley said. “I thought we stood around a little too much on it. When there were loose pucks in the slot, we were just standing on the flanks. We had a couple opportunities, but we have to be quicker on the loose pucks. You can’t have a team icing it when you’re five-on-three.”
Both goaltenders made several fantastic saves that kept their teams in the game, as Laden finished with 24 saves on 26 shots while Maschmeyer stopped 30 of 32 shots.
“They kept it tight because both sides have some pretty lethal weapons in terms of putting the puck in the net, especially Quinnipiac’s first line, so Emerance played well and Chelsea obviously came up huge for them too because I thought we were swarming at times and we couldn’t get it past her,” Crowell said.
Shiann Darkangelo put the Bobcats on the board at 5:34 of the second when she tucked home a rebound that was kicked out by Harvard goaltender Emerance Maschmeyer after a Kelly Babstock wrister from the high slot.
“She’s been great; this weekend I thought she was far and away our best player,” Seeley said. “Her intensity’s been great, she’s making smart plays, and she’s producing offensively, so you can’t ask for much more.”
Harvard answered back six minutes later to tie the game when Miye D’Oench one-timed a shot in the wide-open left side of the net after Marissa Gedman skated with the puck from the end boards to the right faceoff circle and sent a pass through the slot to put Quinnipiac netminder Chelsea Laden out of position.
For the second time in as many games, the Bobcats scored a goal late in the second period. Emma Woods skated down the slot and redirected the puck past Maschmeyer’s glove side off a centering feed from Shiann Darkangelo in the right faceoff circle with just 1:05 left in the period to take a 2-1 lead.
“It’s been a concerted effort since we got back from break to really attack the net and that’s something we work on everyday and they executed that play really well,” Seeley said. “[Emma Woods] makes the play at the blue line in our zone and she’s a little tired, gets it to Shiann, then just busted to the net and then Shiann just puts it perfectly on her stick. We work on that a lot, so it was pretty satisfying to see that go in.”
Harvard remained on top of the ECAC standings with the win at 28 points, but Clarkson and Cornell are right behind them at 26 and 25, respectively.
“I mean, we always want to get the two points because it’s a tight race at the top; Clarkson’s right on our footsteps and so is Cornell, so we would have like to get two points but based on how the game went we’re lucky to get one,” Crowell said.
