This sentiment is embraced by McAuliffe, the leading architect of the team’s chemistry.

“There are times when you need a serious, fire-’em-up speech, but that time is small compared to the times when you need to make the best of it and just have fun,” she said. “I guess I can do both, but I prefer to do more jokes and be more lighthearted.

“There’s a little bit of a prankster in me.”

That’s the understatement of the year. Consider McAuliffe’s account of a team bus ride back from Toronto.

“Me being as skinny as I am, I’m able to climb into the [overhead] compartments and crawl the length of the bus. So Nicole [Corriero] is sitting up front and someone opened [the compartment] up because we were all in on it and I just put my arm over and whacked her head and then get back up there.”

Just once, right? Wrong…

“The first couple of times she’d be like, ‘all right, stop,’” McAuliffe said, mimicking her teammate’s voice. “And then I’d do it again. And everyone kept getting farther away from her. She’d be like ‘Okay guys, seriously,’” again impersonating Corriero, “and she’d look around and no one would be anywhere near her, and she’d say ‘who was it?’ and then she’d go on doing whatever she was doing again.”

Done yet? Not a chance.

“Kat [Sweet] gave me a water bottle and I poured a little water on her head. She was so clueless. It literally took forever. The entire bus was laughing our faces off. Finally I think I dropped the water bottle and she realized where the hits were coming from. It was entertaining.”

Fortunately for the team’s chemistry, pranks aren’t the only way McAuliffe shows her outgoing personality.

“It’s really funny because I met Lauren first on my recruiting trip...Aside from my host, who was Jamie Hagerman ’03, she was the one person I remembered,” Corriero said.

“That kind of going out of her way to make people feel welcome in any kind of situation...Having that sets a really good example for everybody else. You just kind of build on that and feed on that.”

But even after taking into account her wit, sense of humor and the welcoming atmosphere McAuliffe creates, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone more passionate about the game of hockey. While she may not be the leader on the score sheet, no one plays harder or wants to win more badly than she does. And McAuliffe gets results from her teammates while keeping everyone smiling.

“She’s a very witty, funny kid. She can be serious when she needs to be. She has to be a captain in certain respects. That other thing, that’s what people look up to her for,” Ruggiero said.

“She keeps people in good spirits all the time is always smiling, always complementing, always poking a joke at something that just lightens the mode. Like I sort of said about the chemistry earlier this year—people are generally happy. That I think contributes to how you play on the ice.”