While the national focus might be on the players missing for the Olympics, senior Ali Boe is back for her third season between the pipes for the Crimson. She will be Harvard’s anchor, as well as one of the most experienced players on the team.

With a couple goals here and a couple more saves there, the Harvard women’s hockey team could be entering this season looking for its fourth consecutive national championship.

As it stands, after three defeats in the NCAA finals, the Crimson will have a tough, uphill road ahead in its attempt to return to the title match.

Luckily for Harvard, however, the entire national picture is wide open for the taking. With the best athletes across the country training and hoping to make the final national team cuts before the Olympics, most of the upper echelon of women’s collegiate hockey will be gone this season.

Four years ago, Harvard also saw some of its best players take a year’s leave of absence during the last Olympics and finished the season 18-11-2. Since then, the Crimson has lost only 14 games in three seasons of play.

The picture this year is just as hazy and up in the air as it was at the start of the season four years ago.

“Honestly, I am depending on all my seniors and all my juniors to carry this load this year. We’ve got really good senior and junior leadership,” Harvard coach Katey Stone said. “They have developed well in our program and they have all improved. It’ll be interesting, but it’s way too soon to tell how it’s going to go for us.”

Harvard will figure out its strengths and weaknesses very quickly as it opens the season with four out of five games against ECAC opponents. The streak ends with a tough matchup against the top-ranked national team, St. Lawrence. The talented Saints will benefit from a few weeks’ head start to the season

“We have been waiting for this for a while now,” captain Carrie Schroyer said. “In the preseason we are waiting for Oct. 15—for the official start of our practices. And we were looking forward to Oct. 29—for our first game.”

“It might just mean it takes us a little longer to get our feet under us,” Stone said. “St. Lawrence is very talented and very good and they didn’t really lose a lot—although they lost their captain, Rebecca Russell.”

After the opening tough stretch, however, things calm down a bit for Harvard until Nov. 25 and 26 for two games against Duluth. Unlike last season when Wisconsin and two-time defending champion Minnesota were on its schedule, the Crimson does not face either team this year.

“We tried to play them this year before going to Duluth on Thanksgiving weekend and they weren’t able to do it,” Stone said. “We want to try to play the toughest schedule in the country. We are playing a lot of Hockey East teams—they are more local but they should be pretty good.”

Last season, the Crimson played 14 games before the Christmas break—a high number for Harvard—and the multitude of midweek games seemed to leave the squad tired out on the ice in the third period of its contests.

Before the January exam period this year, the Crimson will only play two midweek games—although four of its games will be some of its toughest of the season against Dartmouth, St. Lawrence, and Minnesota-Duluth.

Harvard will also see a number of opponents who are just starting their first season at Division I—including Robert Morris and Quinnipiac.

“We are always excited anytime women’s hockey is expanding—anytime that there are new programs that are coming up along the line, that is a big step for women’s ice hockey,” Schroyer said. “We love to play them—they have a lot of heart, they worked hard out there, and they give us a good battle.”

When the Crimson steps on the ice against these inexperienced opponents, things will not be too different on its own side of the ice. With the graduation of three important skaters—particularly the all-time record holder for goals in a season, Nicole Corriero ’05—and the loss of senior Julie Chu to the U.S. Olympic team, Harvard’s upper ranks do not provide quite as much depth as they have the last two years.

“We lost a lot to graduation and it takes time to replace a Corriero, an Ashley Banfield [’05], a Kat Sweet [’05],” Stone said. “We’re going to rely a lot on goaltending and fortunately we have good goaltending. So we’re going to start there and work our way up by taking care of our own zone first and playing really good defense. We need to keep everything simple.”

In fact, with the return of senior Ali Boe—who has spent the last two years in net for Harvard and started the two national championship games during that stretch—the Crimson will be well anchored on the defensive side.

With the loss of Corriero, it may just be a question of how many goals Harvard can net against the top competition in the country.

If it can manage to get enough of those one-goal wins against the best teams on its schedule, the Crimson may find itself in a familiar spot when all is said and done.

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