But Harvard’s best efforts didn’t faze Minnesota.
“I think our team’s been confident; that’s one of the things that’s carried us,” Wendell said. “We were tied a couple of times in this game. We came back. We battled back. It was a just a matter of time.”
A high-sticking call on defenseman Lindsay Weaver at 6:18, though, opened the door for Minnesota to surge back ahead.
After standing tall against a number of scrums in front of the net, Boe could not snag defender Lyndsay Wall's slapshot, giving the Gophers its second lead of the night, 2-1, at 7:58.
Harvard evened the score with its own lethal power play just over halfway into the frame.
As Weaver hopped back on the ice from her second penalty of the period, Harvard turned a 4-on-4 situation into a man-advantage.
With a lunging poke-check from Chu, Corriero corralled the puck and slung it to Vaillancourt, who deked inside on her defender and fooled Horak with another crack at the top right shelf at 10:33.
Minnesota managed to take a 3-2 edge into the intermission, however, after defenseman Ashley Albrecht fired slapshot from the point past Boe into the back of the net.
In a game that most experts predicted to be very high-scoring, the initial period contained just one goal on a total of 15 shots.
Special teams, crucial to Harvard's success all season long, were not a major factor in the first period, as the referees delivered only three power plays—two of those to the Crimson— and largely let these titans settle matters on the ice.
“I think it was a very narrow margin that tipped the scale in their favor today and we were in it all the way and certainly had opportunities to win” Stone said.
But the loss was a hard one to swallow, considering overtime was within Harvard’s grasp and in many respects the Crimson outplayed the Gophers.
“I had a lot of people telling me it was our day today,” Stone said. “We went toe-to-toe with the best team in the country and there’s a lot to be said for that. I had a feeling that it would go to overtime and see what happens but it didn’t work out that way.”
—Staff writer John R. Hein can be reached at hein@fas.harvard.edu.
—Staff writer Jonathan Lehman can be reached at jlehman@fas.harvard.edu.