Darwitz rounded out the period with a hat trick with slightly less than seven minutes left in the game.

“Sometimes against a fast team, you just look like you’re running around a little bit,” Stone said. “We didn’t make it easy on ourselves when we did put the puck in deep. We lost it at the blue line a lot of the time. Every once in awhile, we just got caught watching instead of participating.”

The game’s finish was a difficult and disappointing ending after the Crimson’s solid start.

Seven minutes into the game, the Gophers held a 6-1 advantage in shots—a statistical dominance that Harvard usually sees in its favor—but was simply flinging shots from wherever they had a chance as opposed to crashing the net and getting the rebounds. The latter style of play led to the third-period barrage of goals for Minnesota.

But it was the Crimson who seemed to adhere to this style early on, when junior Kat Sweet sent the Harvard fans into a craze with the game’s first goal.

Right before the 13-minute mark in the first period, freshman Katie Johnston sent the puck to classmate Caitlin Cahow at the point. Cahow then fired the puck towards the right side of the net and found Sweet, who managed to get the end of her stick on the puck and jump it top shelf past Horak’s left.

But the goal was not the only solid scoring chance for the Crimson in a period in which it was outshot 13-7 by the Gophers. Twice Corriero sparked the offense by taking the puck up through the defense herself and trying to fake Horak or beat her to the right side.

On the second of these opportunities—which came with 9:15 to play in the first—her shot was stopped partly by Horak and partly by Minnesota defensman Allie Sanchez. But neither got a handle on the puck, which found its way over to co-captain Lauren McAuliffe on the left side of the crease. While Horak’s right leg lay extended back after trying to stop Corriero’s shot, McAuliffe picked the puck up off the ice and tried to jump it into the net. Her shot clanged off the inside of the right post, causing the red light behind the glass to flash, though the officials ultimately ruled that the puck had never crossed the goal line.

Harvard’s chances came from a dump-and-chase style that tested the young Minnesota defense.

“If there is a weak spot in their game, it’s their defensemen,” Stone said. “We were trying to pinch on the boards a little bit and wreak a little havoc with their defensemen. I think it did work for a while.”

But in the third period, Minnesota’s first line took over the game and proved too much for Harvard to handle.

For the Crimson, it was a bitter end to what was a spectacular quest for the national championship. For the Gophers, it was victory at long last.

“I have never in my life gotten to throw my gloves up,” Darwitz said. “I’ve been in these games, I’ve been in world championships and we’ve always gotten second. But I don’t think this feeling is going to go away for a while.

“This is sweet. This is awesome.”

—Staff writer Gabriel M. Velez can be reached at gmvelez@fas.harvard.edu.

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