"That was a great game," Stone said on Saturday. "It was up-and-down, and both goaltenders were awesome today. We took a lot of point-blank shots that their kid saved. But our kid had to save a lot of screen shots, which is a mark of someone being in a zone in a game."

Ruddock was hardly challenged early on, as Harvard's aggressive forechecking kept play almost entirely out of the Crimson end for the first 10 minutes. But the Princeton defenders' passing improved as the game progressed, and the Tigers earned their fair share of shots on goal.

The ever-dangerous Kilbourne got the first significant Princeton scoring chance as she split a pair of defenders between the face-off circles and broke in all alone on Ruddock. Kilbourne tried to slip the puck into the left corner, but Ruddock dove down and deflected the shot wide.

Late in the second period, Ruddock stopped two shots in traffic from point-blank range. Then, in one of the more dangerous Princeton chances of the day, Tiger first-liner Nikola Holmes directed a screen shot towards the open half of the net, but the puck failed to elude Ruddock's extended glove.

"It was important for us to see what [Ruddock] could do in a high-pressure...game, and she did great," Stone said. "She played with tremendous confidence. She made it look easy back there."

Van Beusekom was equally impressive in the other net, stopping an onslaught of Crimson odd-man rushes and point-blank shots. She kept Princeton in the game, though her team was outshot by a 2-to-1 ratio in the first two periods. Her performance was well-received by Springer who, having practiced with the Harvard forwards for three years, knew firsthand how tough it would be to stop them.

"[Van Beusekom] definitely played well today," Springer said. "She came to play. That's what we expect every day from our goalies. But Harvard's forwards--Botterill, [Kiirsten] Suurkask, Francisco, [etc.]--are just so good, so the fact that she hung in for as long as she did was great."

At the 8:40 mark of the third period, the Botterill-Shewchuk tandem ended the scoring draught with an explosive goal. From back in the Harvard end, a Botterill pass through traffic set Shewchuk free on a breakaway at mid-ice.