The No. 1 Harvard women's hockey team turned in a blue-collar performance yesterday against Princeton to bounce back from last week's loss to No. 7 St. Lawrence and complete a sweep of the Big Three series.

The Crimson (8-2-0, 6-2-0 ECAC) took care of the Tigers, 7-1, after escaping last-place Yale, 4-3, Saturday. The difference in the two games was the final period.

Against Princeton (4-5-2, 3-5-1), Harvard turned it on in the third, capitalizing on a five-minute major penalty against the Tigers for four goals early in the period. That was the opposite of the third period against Yale (1-10-0, 0-9-0), when the Crimson narrowly survived a late comeback that saw the Elis score three unanswered goals in the final 13 minutes of regulation.

More importantly, Harvard welcomed back senior goaltender Crystal Springer, who made her first two starts between the pipes since spraining a knee at Minnesota Nov. 7. Springer made 37 saves and allowed four goals on the weekend to improve her record to 4-0-0.

And the Crimson will throw another welcome-back party today when junior winger Tammy Shewchuk and sophomore center Jen Botterill return to Cambridge. They spent the last two weeks playing for the Canadian National Team in the Three Nations Cup. Before they left, Shewchuk and Botterill had been the top two scorers in the ECAC.

While Shewchuk and Botterill were in Montreal, Harvard lost to St. Lawrence--the only ranked team it played during that stretch. The Crimson also struggled to one-goal victories over a pair of lower-division teams, Cornell and Yale, before exploding against Princeton.

"We really learned a lot over the past two weeks," said Harvard Coach Katey Stone. "We responded as well as we could and everybody is playing with a lot of confidence now. We showed that we're not a two-player team."

With the two wins, the Crimson moved into sole possession of fourth place in the conference.