The Crimson faced seven Brown power plays, and turned them all away, including a 65-second stretch of five-on-three skating at the end of the first period in which Brown scarcely threatened. A key component of the unit was junior goalkeeper Ali Boe, who posted her fourth shutout of the season and wound up with 26 saves.

The flip side of that coin was the Harvard power play squaring off against the Brown penalty kill, ranked first in all of Division I at the start of the game. The top power-play unit, though, was able to find the chinks in the Bears armor, converting two power-play chances out of six.

“A difference about our power play from other power plays may be that we really try to move the puck,” Corriero said. “I think we were able to expose that we had five players and they have four, just by moving the puck and finding those seams.”

That included the final score, which pushed the lead to 4-0 with 10:56 remaining in the game. On that play, Vaillancourt knocked in a neat one-timer off a feed from Corriero, her 12th goal of the season.

The Crimson will now embark on a 17-day layoff for exams, hoping to return from that break as energized as it did from the holiday vacation—after which it has won three straight.

When the team returns, they will be thrust back into the thick of the conference schedule, with home meetings against Princeton and Yale on January 28th and 29th.

—Staff writer Jonathan Lehman can be reached at jlehman@fas.harvard.edu.