Harvard will have to refrain from taking bad penalties in the offensive zone, a glaring stain in the Crimson’s 4-1 NCAA semifinal victory over St. Lawrence Friday night. Harvard compiled 12 penalties in the win.
Harvard’s strength, much like Minnesota’s, relies in large part on an offensively explosive first line. Twenty-four of tri-captain Nicole Corriero’s 59 goals have come on a power play that poses a triple threat to opponents with teammates Julie Chu and Sarah Vaillancourt.
“When you go out with those three top players coming down at you, you just have to make sure you’re playing the body, keep them to the outside, make their shots go where Jody can easily make a save,” Gopher defenseman Lyndsay Wall said. “When they’re in close they have a high percentage of shooting and they can bury the puck easily.”
Halldorson contends Minnesota will be prepared to extinguish Harvard’s offensive firepower.
“We know what they are trying to do. We don’t want back-door passes where Corriero just taps the puck in,” Halldorson said. “She has had a great season this year doing that. We can’t give up those kinds of goals—we’re going to make them work for every goal they get.”
Though Harvard lost to Minnesota 5-3 on Nov. 27 of this season, both teams realize that too much has changed to use that game as a measuring stick for tomorrow’s championship bout.
“That was very early in the season and it was especially early for Harvard because they start later than we do,” Halldorson said. “They’ve definitely come along second half of the year, and I think they’re playing a lot better now than they were playing back then.”
“What I remember was their top line went against our top line quite a bit, and that was fun to watch,” she added. “You’re talking about players that love to compete and all have a lot of offensive abilities. You’ll probably see a little bit of that Sunday too.”
Minnesota has been the No. 1 team in the nation all year. Harvard is 19-0-2 in its last 21 games, going undefeated in 2005. Tomorrow evening, the unstoppable force will attempt to dethrone the immovable object from its pedestal in women’s college hockey.
“We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t think we could win the national championship,” Stone said. “We could have packed it in when we were 7-6-1 on Dec. 11. We feel really good about the things we’re doing and we’ll play tomorrow’s game with a tremendous amount of confidence.”
Harvard and Minnesota face off for the NCAA Championship tomorrow at 4:30 p.m.. The game will be streamed live on whrb.com and broadcast on CSTV.
—Staff writer John R. Hein can be reached at hein@fas.harvard.edu.