Last Sunday, the Harvard women’s hockey team fell in its third consecutive NCAA final. The three-year inter-Olympics span has seen the Crimson amass an 86-14-5 record, nab the Patty Kazmaier Award for the top collegiate player in two of three seasons, and set a new high for a goals in a season—with tri-captain Nicole Corriero netting 59 in her senior campaign.

If not for a slow start this year, Harvard might have racked up its third straight 30-win season, an unprecedented feat in the women’s game.

But with the departure of Corriero—a stalwart on Crimson’s top lines for the past four years and an emblematic Harvard hockey player—comes the inescapable sensation that Natalie Darwitz’s game-winning goal in the final last weekend brought about more than the end of the season, but with it the end of the era.

This is not necessarily as bleak a scenario, however, as the surface indicates.

True, Corriero departs for graduation with 150 goals and 265 points in a school-record 136 games played, placing her third on the school’s all-time lists in both offensive categories. Additionally, her outspoken leadership and dominating on-ice presence will be leaving along with her.

Also leaving is defenseman Ashley Banfield, the Crimson’s unquestioned anchor on the blue line all year long as well as a consistent producer on offense.

Don’t forget Kat Sweet either, the charismatic tri-captain and occasional scorer off the third line, or Ali Crum and Sarah Holbrook, pivotal role players throughout their Harvard careers.

In addition to the five seniors, in 2006—an Olympic year with the Games taking place in Turin, Italy in February—the Crimson will also have to endure the absence of its two most skilled skaters, national team candidates Julie Chu and Sarah Vaillancourt.

Chu, a rising senior, and Vaillancourt, a sophomore-to-be, will try out for Team America and Canada, respectively, and both will take the year off from school to devote their energies to international play.

In sum, Harvard coach Katey Stone will lose her top four scorers and four-fifths of her top power play unit, with only seven returning forwards left to propel the offense.

Question marks abound and many prognosticators doubt the Crimson’s ability to return to the national title mix next season.

But while the fortune tellers were foreseeing Harvard’s impending doom, the team was quietly serving notice, even amid the heartbreak of its 4-3 loss to Minnesota—a unit with its own absent stars complicating the road to a three-peat—that its prospects for next season are not all that dim.

In the defeat, all three of the Crimson’s goals were notched by its underclassmen, with scores coming from Vaillancourt and sophomores Caitlin Cahow and Jennifer Sifers, and the young defense held strong against a fearsome Gophers attack.

Sifers came on offensively down the stretch of the season, beginning with a short-handed tally in the ECAC tournament final against Dartmouth and culminating in her lethal strike over Minnesota netminder Jody Horak’s right shoulder to tie the NCAA final at 1.

The second line of which Sifers is a crucial member, however, was not counted on for scoring punch this season. Instead, the unit—also featuring junior Carrie Schroyer and sophomore Liza Solley—became known for its intensity and aggressive fore-checking.

With the whole of the potent first line departing, this line becomes the top line by default and with that transition comes a much increased share of the offensive burden.

That load will also fall on players like Katie Johnston, who seeks to return to the promising form of her freshman year, and Jennifer Raimondi, who hopes to finally realize her potential in her final season in the Crimson sweater.

Add into the mix a pair of big and talented freshmen—Laura Brady and Adrienne Bernakevitch—and Harvard suddenly has a number of scoring options. Brady impressed during brief stints on the top two lines towards the end of the season.

Cahow, meanwhile, despite her involvement in the tragic Darwitz goal, showed herself to be among the team’s most poised and confident skaters throughout the tournament.

Cahow will probably be asked to fill Banfield’s shoes next year as the defensive leader. Stone got a taste of what the defensive situation might look like next year when Banfield went down with an injury in the semifinals and liked what she saw.

The understaffed and undersized group of Cahow, junior Jennifer Skinner, sophomore Lindsay Weaver, and freshman Jessica Mackenzie rose to the occasion and held St. Lawrence to a single goal in the semis.

The Crimson is at its most secure between the pipes. Junior netminder Ali Boe returns for her senior year as the school’s all-time leader in shutouts and hopefully still riding a season-ending hot streak that pushed Harvard into its third consecutive proverbial bridesmaid’s dress.

Backup Emily Vitt will also have another chance to up her playing time next fall.

Nevertheless, the team’s detractors will be out in force next fall, betting on up-and-comers like Mercyhurst and New Hampshire instead.But the Crimson has been underestimated before and it usually rises up to humble its doubters.

Many of the pieces are in place, only to be solidified by the return of Chu and Vaillancourt in 2007.

So go ahead and count this team out for next year; it’ll probably make its fourth straight national finals out of spite.

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