“We shot ourselves in the foot by having too many penalties,” Buesser said. “You can’t do that. We know they’re very skilled on the power play. We need to play our game and not give them chances like that.”

Cornell—which was playing without star forwards Rebecca Johnston and Brianne Jenner, both of whom were absent due to Canadian national team commitments—didn’t waste time taking advantage of Harvard’s penalties. On its first power play of the game, Big Red senior Hayley Hughes sent the puck past Bellamy for what would prove to be the game-winner.

“It was a pretty back and forth game pretty much into the first goal,” Buesser said. “We were in their zone all over them...After they got on the board, they were able to tighten up defensively.”

And in the second frame, Cornell finally found its way past the Crimson at full strength, when senior Amber Overguard scored on a Hughes assist in the second period. Hughes picked up her third point of the evening five minutes later, assisting on Lauriane Rougeau’s power-play tally to secure a three-goal lead with 23 minutes of ice time remaining.

But from that point on, it was Harvard that dominated play. While it had nothing to show for its efforts, the Crimson did manage to outshoot the Big Red, 11-5, in the final frame.

“We were all over them,” Dempsey said. “It was kind of frustrating, [because] we didn’t feel that we deserved to lose because of how we played. We played physical, we played aggressive.”

—Staff writer Christina C. McClintock can be reached at ccmcclin@fas.harvard.edu.