“Thank goodness, hopefully, the NCAA is going to expand to eight teams maybe down the road even more so that teams don’t have to have this anguish late in the year and they can just play because this is the most prestigious tournament in the country right now,” Flanagan said.

THE ROAD TO HARVARD

Dartmouth shot the lights out against St. Lawrence in the second semifinal game, but they couldn’t find the back of the net past Rachel Barrie often enough to pull off a victory, losing 4-2 to the Saints.

Barrie made 40 saves in the win, including a number of spectacular stops. At one point in the second period, Barrie had to stretch out on her back to cover up the puck on an unbelievable acrobatic save.

After play stopped for a TV timeout, Barrie skated to the Saints bench to stretch out her quad and calve muscles because of the way her body flexed in order to make the save.

“I don’t like Rachel Barrie anymore!” joked Hudak. “Rachel’s just a heck of a goalie…[she] was phenomenal, and she deserves to be the ECAC goalie of the year—and she is.”

The Big Green threw everything it had at Barrie, but just couldn’t figure her out.

“She has a good solid team in front of her, and she’s tricky,” said Dartmouth sophomore Gillian Apps. “She catches a different way from most goalies, so you have to change the way you shoot at her. She catches with her right hand, most goalies catch with their left. It’s just a tricky kind of way to play a goalie.”

On the offensive end, St. Lawrence converted on three of its first four power plays, dominating the Big Green on special teams.

“A couple of those goals were just bang-bang plays,” Flanagan said. “That’s positioning. I give our kids a lot of credit for being there. There was nothing the goalie could do on at least two of them.”

The performance demonstrated the long way the Saints have come since the beginning of the season when it struggled on special teams to making the effort look easy against the No. 3 team in the nation.

“When you’re struggling, the important thing is to struggle through it,” said St. Lawrence captain Rickie-Lee Doyle. “In a weekend like this, you just trust in your teammates and hope everyone comes prepared.”

“I thought the game would come down to mistakes, and St. Lawrence did a great job of capitalizing on that,” Hudak said. “Penalties are mistakes—for us, not the officials.”

WHAT’S COOLER THAN BEING COOL

At the very beginning of the post-championship game press conference, Harvard coach Katey Stone sat dripping wet besides co-captain Lauren McAuliffe.