Shewchuk and Botterill have each had storied careers at Harvard. Shewchuk passed Mleczko and graduated as Harvard’s all-time leader in points, goals and assists. Botterill scored the game-winning goal in overtime of the national championship game during her freshman season. In 2001, she won the Patty Kazmaier Award, given to the nation’s most outstanding women’s hockey player. Botterill also broke the college hockey record with an 80-game point-scoring streak that began with her first game at Harvard and ended with the last game of her junior season.

While the U.S. National Team centralized in the fall of 2000 and lured several athletes, including Ruggiero, out of college for the year, the Canadian National Team came together only a week prior to the World Championships. That made Canada’s victory in the World Championship all the more eye-opening.

“I like going from one to another with no break,” Shewchuk said last year. “[The international game] is a step up from college hockey, for sure. It’s so much faster. The shots come faster. But college hockey in the U.S. has gotten so much better. It’s at a level now that I’d recommend it to any woman who has serious aspirations.”

“We [Canadians] just feel players are better developing [on their own], and then when we meet up, its new, and exciting—a change of pace that builds our confidence,” Botterill added.

In the award ceremony following Canada’s victory, Botterill was named MVP of the World Championships. She led the tournament with eight goals scored. After the event, Sauvageau credited Botterill’s experiences at Harvard with making her the player that she is today.

“I believe there are things coaches can’t teach,” Sauvageau said. “By putting our players in different situations, in college, in club hockey, it only makes them better. They play for different coaches. Jennifer Botterill has only become a better player in college.”

The Canadians are centralized in Calgary for the Olympic year, however, which forced Botterill to postpone her senior season with the Crimson.

Crimson, White and Blue

Although the U.S. failed to win its first World Championship last year, the Americans did manage to sweep the Canadians in a mid-October two-game series, winning each game by a score of 4-1. Ruggiero had a goal and an assist in the first of those games.

“We’re underdogs again, but we really want to win the gold medal in front of our own crowd,” Ruggiero said.

Ruggiero has continued to develop as a player during her time with the U.S. National Team. Already a prolific goal-scorer with Harvard thanks to her hard blue-line slapshot, she’s emerged as one of the United State’s top offensive-minded defenseman. She now has the skating ability to finish an odd-man rush with the grace of her forward counterparts.

“I think we’ve worked a lot on skating, just overall when you get to play with 25 of the best athletes in the United States, they’re going to push you,” Ruggiero said. “The Harvard atmosphere is very competitive, but here you’re playing internationally. It’s a win-win situation.”

The whole U.S. team has improved in terms of its speed.

“I think we’re more skilled then we’ve been,” said U.S. National Team Coach Ben Smith. “We’re tenacious with and without the puck. Those are the things we’ve been working on. But we’ve got to make sure we balance that speed and not take ourselves out of the play sometimes by being overaggressive.”

The Americans have been able to succeed despite a mixture of ages that ranges from defenseman Lyndsay Wall, age 16, to Cammi Granato, age 30. Several players, including Mleczko, are now married.