In its opening playoff series, the No. 2 Harvard women’s hockey team proved that when it rains shots on net, goals tend to pour in on helpless puckstoppers’ heads.

In a two-game set against Cornell this past weekend, the Crimson rejuvenated its offense with 13 goals, winning Saturday’s game 4-1 and Friday night’s contest 9-1.

This surge came on the heels of last weekend’s two low-scoring affairs in which Harvard (27-3-1, 17-3-0 ECAC) could only muster a combined three goals—one an empty-netter—on Yale and Princeton.

“We’re preparing for the ECACs and the NCAAs,” co-captain Angela Ruggiero said. “If we came to this game, just sort of walked into the rink and didn’t really prepare ourselves mentally and just played without a lot of intensity, it would carry over next week.”

The two wins against Cornell (7-21-2, 3-17-0) marked the last two home games for the three Harvard seniors—co-captains Lauren McAuliffe and Angela Ruggiero and Mina Pell.

“Obviously it’s a sad day,” Ruggiero said. “We love this rink, we love playing in front of our fans, our classmates. Although it’s our last game here, at least it’s not our last game period.”

“The bottom line is that a lot of teams’ seasons are over now, and we get to still play,” said Harvard coach Katey Stone. “And so we’re not focused in on the sadness part of it and saying good-bye. It’s time to say hello to somebody and take a game or two from people, so that’s what we’re working for.”

The focus now shifts to Brown, the Crimson’s opponent in the next round of the ECAC playoffs. The game will take place in Schenectady this Saturday, with finals to follow the next afternoon.

HARVARD 4, CORNELL 1

Though Harvard was penciled in to sweep Cornell before the quarterfinals series began, the Crimson still came out and played like it was the NCAA Championship title game in Providence, R.I.

“It was a little different than yesterday, but oftentimes that happens on the second day,” Stone said. “It gets a little closer on the second day.”

In the first half of the opening period, it looked like Harvard might run away with another one-sided affair as its big guns stepped up to put the Crimson ahead 2-0.

Two minutes removed from Ruggiero’s opening tally, Corriero added one of her own from McAuliffe at 7:32 in the first. She received the puck alone behind the net on the left side, skated with it up to the side of the net and put it right in between Vineberg’s legs for the goal.

“It’s playoff hockey, you got to come with your best game everyday,” Ruggiero said. “One thing that we talked about was that we didn’t want to let up, we wanted to play our level of hockey today. Although we didn’t score as many goals, we went hard the entire time.”

In fact, the Harvard defense stepped up its play and allowed fewer shots on this night than the previous one, allowing only nine shots to reach sophomore Ali Boe.