The New York road trip signals two things for the Harvard women’s ice hockey team: the approaching finals period and approaching tough competition. This weekend the team was met with the latter in the Empire State, dropping the Friday night matchup while tying on Saturday afternoon.

HARVARD 3, No. 7/7 COLGATE 3

After a string of L’s trickled down the Crimson’s (1-9-1, 1-5-1 ECAC) schedule this season, Saturday afternoon’s match up in Hamilton, N.Y. brought Harvard its first tie of the season.

The Crimson offense was silent for a majority of the game, notching zero goals over the course of the first and second period. In contrast, the Raiders (15-2-2, 6-2-1) had a steady scoring unit, adding a goal to the scoreboard once each period.

Harvard’s offense came alive in the sixth minute of the third period off the stick of freshman forward Val Turgeon. So far this season Turgeon has played in all 11 of the Crimson’s games and has amassed three goals, tied with junior forward Lexie Liang as second highest on the team behind co-captain Sydney Daniels who has five.

Junior Haley Mullins followed Turgeon’s goal less than three minutes later with help from both Daniels and Liang to tie the game at two. The contest remain tied for close to 10 minutes before Liang followed up her assist with a goal of her own, putting Harvard ahead for the first time in the entire weekend.

As the mood shifted to look in the Crimson’s favor, Colgate sophomore Jessie Eldridge drilled the puck past Harvard goalkeeper Molly Tissenbaum in the final 30 seconds of play. The notch tied the game and would go on to be the final score for either team on the night.

CORNELL 3, HARVARD 0

Coming off a one point overtime loss to No. 4/3 Minnesota-Duluth last week, the Crimson felt prepared to take on an unranked team in Ithaca.

The Big Red (8-4-1, 6-2-1), however, was just as prepared, if not more, for Harvard, as its defense was able to keep the Crimson silent for the entirety of the game and hand the visitors their fourth shutout loss of the season.

The first period of action remained a scoreless back and forth battle between the two squads, as each of the opposing goaltenders was able to handle every shot their opponent gave them. The first period was when the Harvard offense was at its peak with 11 shots on goal in the first 20 minutes. After that it could only muster 10 combined shots on goal in the following two periods.

Cornell struck its first blow at the 15 minute mark of the second period when freshman Valeria Audet broke the scoring silence with help from teammates Pippy Gerace and Lenka Serdar.

Early in the third period the bleeding continued for the Crimson, as Cornell took advantage of a power play within the first two minutes of play. An insurance goal was scored late in the third period by the Big Red, with Harvard tallying its lowest shot on goal total of the night with four. Tissembaum remains winless this season.

–Staff writer Ariel Smolik-Valles can be reached at ariel.smolik-valles@thecrimson.com.