Sophomore forward Julie Chu (13) and the women's hockey team topped St. Lawrence 6-1 in the ECAC finals yesterday. The Crimson now advances to the Frozen Four this weekend.

SCHENECTADY, N.Y.—There was only one thing on Harvard coach Katey Stone’s mind before the ECAC Championship game against St. Lawrence.

And it wasn’t the championship trophy, the upcoming NCAA finals or the possibility of sweeping the men and women’s conference hockey championships.

“I said to the commissioner, ‘Are there hats for the winners?’” Stone said. “Because I had never gotten a hat—wanted to play for a hat today. It’s all about this hat.”

After handily defeating the second-seeded Saints by a final score of 6-1, Stone got to joke about her wish and not only received a hat, but also a shower of Gatorade from her overjoyed players.

The Crimson had the pressure on St. Lawrence goalie and co-captain Rachel Barrie from the start, breaking through early and often on the ECAC goaltender of the year. “To turn around after playing a fairly long hockey game, to have a tremendous amount of energy, to create a ton of pressure, to play a really smart team game today, showed that everybody stepped up,” Stone said.

On Saturday, Barrie had helped stifle the powerful Dartmouth offense with a number of amazing stretching saves—but on Sunday she never seemed to be quite in her groove.

Co-captain Lauren McAuliffe found an early open opportunity to put Harvard on top, and said she knew she had to take advantage of such an open-and-shut chance on Barrie.

“I thought, is it really that wide open,” McAuliffe said. “The puck came across the crease, and if I had missed it, I would have been embarrassed.”

Against Brown, the Crimson scored an early first period goal, but couldn’t keep up the pressure enough to push another one in to extend the lead. On Sunday, Harvard focused on throwing Barrie off balance and then delivering blow after blow whenever possible. The strategy worked to a ‘t’ as the Crimson outshot the Saints 33-6 after the second period.

“We talked about momentum before the game started,” co-captain Angela Ruggiero said. “Playing in last year’s ECAC final, where the momentum wasn’t on our side, we realized once you start, you have to keep, keep, keep going, you can’t let up for a second.”

On the defensive side of the ice, sophomore Jennifer Skinner stepped up in place of junior Ashley Banfield to help lead a stifling and omnipresent Harvard defensive unit.

“It just seemed a lot of times, the pucks just weren’t going on sticks the way you would like to play it,” said St. Lawrence coach Paul Flanagan. “It just seemed that every time that we tried to get something going they were there, with sticks in passing lanes, sticks on sticks, thwarting any attempt to get anything on goal.”

On the offensive side of the ice, Skinner helped spark the scoring with her passing and playmaking—registering assists on two of the six goals.

For the Harvard team, one of this season’s focuses has been the success of the player creating the goal rather than scoring it.

“We have this theme on our team—truly the person who set up the goal is the one who has made the best play,” Stone said. “And we recognize the playmakers by the goal scorer pointing to them right after the goal. The bottom line is let’s get a lot of pointing going on because then good things are happening.”