Bodies and pucks flew all over the ice at Bright Hockey Center last night as Harvard squared off against a squad of big, brawny scholarship athletes.
Wait a minute are we talking about a women's ice hockey game?
Well, not just any women's ice hockey games-the team that thrashed the Crimson. S-1 was perennial power Northeastern.
"It was take paying the Bruins," said Assistant Coach Bill MacDonoald. So considering the level of compention-helped along by the Scholarship funding Northeastern pours into its hockey program-the Cantabs didn't do poorly at all.
The ice women kept within two points of the visitors through the first two periods. Only in the final stanza did they allow the flurry of goals that broke the game open.
Crimson goalie Tracy Kimmel turned in a gutsy performance, recording 36 saves on the night.
" Tracy was outstanding, which form a coach's standpoint is what really counts," Harvard Coach John Dooley said of the senior, who had started only one game in goal before this season. "She's really starting to come alive."
Northeastern got on the board first, but not without a little controversy. Huskie left wing Donna McCarthy took a shot that Kimmel appeared to have smothered.
But before the whistle could blow teammate Sharon Stidsen skated into the fray and knocked the puck out of Kimmel's hands into the net.
"We were robbed on the first goal," Kimmel said afterwards, 'There should have been a whistle."
The Huskies carried the 1-0 lead into the second period, but their 14-0 margin in shots was a more telling statistics.
"It the strategy is to allow the other goalie to sleep, they're doing a good job of it," said one of the 42 spectators.
Three minutes into the new period, Northeastern connected again, as Co-Captain Michelle Surette went one on one with Kimmel and drove the puck between the goalie's kness.
The barrage of shots continued, each one followed to the net by a crowd of Huskies impersonating college students trying to stuff as many people as possible into a phone booth or a Volkswagen or, in this case, a hockey goal.
And each time, Kimmel disentangled herself from the mass with the puck in her glove.
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