In addition to providing solid goaltending, senior Ali Boe took a leadership role this season, guiding a young squad that included eight freshmen, many of whom received significant playing time.

This winter, the Harvard women’s hockey team saved its best for last.

The squad with a penchant for late-game heroics made waves in March, engineering a dramatic run to an ECAC Tournament title and an NCAA Frozen Eight appearance, despite losing its standouts to the quadrennial Winter Olympics.

With its season hanging in the balance, the Crimson dispatched visiting Clarkson in a trio of hard-fought, one-goal games to advance out of the conference tournament quarterfinals. Junior Jennifer Sifers clinched the series win with a double-overtime tally in the rubber match.

“I thought it was a great series overall,” Harvard coach Katey Stone said. “We match up really well, particularly this year. You knew it was going to be close.”

The Crimson had earned the No. 4 seed and home ice by besting the Golden Knights the prior weekend on a last-second sudden-death strike by senior Jennifer Raimondi.

Raimondi, enjoying a renaissance in her farewell tour, was named to the All-ECAC first team after leading Harvard with 37 points.

The nail-biting trilogy also featured the elevated play of senior netminder Ali Boe, who allowed a mere three goals in nearly four games’ worth of hockey (223:28) as part of a stellar senior season. Boe wound up with a .922 save percentage, 2.11 goals against average, and four shutouts to add to her school-record total.

Still looking for a berth in the national playoffs, the Crimson ventured north to Canton, N.Y., home of top-seeded St. Lawrence. Harvard continued its recent dominance of the Saints, upending them in a stunning 3-1 semifinal upset on the strength of two goals from junior Liza Solley and a 40-save effort from Boe.

Then, in the final against Brown, the Crimson rebounded from an early 3-0 deficit to prevail by a 4-3 score, with all of the goals coming in an action-packed first period, to secure an automatic bid to the Frozen Eight. Freshman Sarah Wilson netted two of her 13 goals on the season in the contest and earned tournament MVP honors. Classmate Jenny Brine was tops for rookies on the team with 18 goals.

For that duel, Harvard traveled to the site of its heart-breaking defeat in last year’s NCAA final—the Whittemore Center on the campus of the University of New Hampshire (UNH)—to square off against the top-ranked Wildcats. The Crimson made a strong effort but was ultimately overwhelmed by UNH’s skill and speed in a 3-1 loss.

The defeat ended a campaign that began a mystery, became a disappointment, and wound up—given its gritty post-season performance—a vindication.

Harvard started the 2005-06 season having lost its top five scorers from a year ago: record-setting forward Nicole Corriero and all-star defenseman Ashley Banfield to graduation, and Julie Chu, Caitlin Cahow, and Sarah Vaillancourt to represent their countries in the Winter Games.

“We lost a lot to graduation and it takes time to replace a Corriero, an Ashley Banfield,” Stone said in a preseason interview. “We’re going to rely a lot on goaltending and fortunately we have good goaltending. We need to keep everything simple.”

As a result of the departures, Stone was left with three seniors—Raimondi, Boe, and captain Carrie Schroyer—to lead an inexperienced squad that included eight freshmen—many of whom logged significant minutes. The youthful unit had its inadequacies, particularly defensive stability (junior Lindsey Weaver was the lone blueliner returning with two letters under her belt), exposed by more seasoned squads in late 2005, losing to Clarkson and tying St. Lawrence (on a Solley score with six seconds left) at the Bright Center and falling to Yale and Minnesota-Duluth twice on the road. The autumn rut culminated in a 3-0 dissection at the hands of New Hampshire, the first shutout suffered by the program in over four years.

Although the team showed signs of improvement heading into 2006, regression or exams broke the momentum, as the Crimson was thrashed again by UNH and went winless in consecutive Ivy matchups against Dartmouth, Brown, Yale, and Princeton, the latter clash an ugly 6-1 beating in New Jersey. The nadir surely arrived on Valentine’s Day, when Boston College wrested the Beanpot trophy away from Harvard, which lost, 2-0, despite its hosting privileges and a seven-year monopoly on the tournament hardware.

In the ensuing weeks, though, the Crimson initiated the streak that vaulted it from underachiever to upstart and promised big things for 2007.

“Looking back, everyone has a lot of positive things to take out of it,” Boe said. “As a senior class, we’re extremely happy with the way the season went, and for everyone else, they have a lot to look forward to next year.”

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