Harvard carried the momentum into overtime, but it wasn’t able to convert on any of its five shots. The Crimson’s defense was strong enough to prevent Northeastern from registering a single shot, which forced the game into a shootout.

The Huskies might have seemed to have had an advantage in a shootout. Their conference, Hockey East, uses shootouts to resolve tie games, and Northeastern had reached last year’s final with a shootout win over Boston University. But although Harvard didn’t have as much game experience with shootouts, the Crimson’s practices had prepared the team well.

“I think that we have quite a lot of practice with shootouts,” Ryabkina said. “People were kind of familiar with them.”

Goals from sophomore Jillian Dempsey and Huskies captain Alyssa Wohlfeiler forced sudden death.

And in the fourth round, Pucci broke the stalemate with a goal that put Harvard ahead for good.

“I think that overall hard work just really paid off,” Ryabkina said. “Jillian and Pucci did a great job.”

Bellamy sealed the deal with the final save to send the Crimson to the Beanpot finals.

“We had known ourselves as a pretty resilient team,” Buesser said. “It was kind of the personality of our team all year.”

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