The Dartmouth women's hockey team's season is coming down to the wire. Sure, the team can still fight for regular-season Ivy League and maybe ECAC North banners, but these players are too talented to be satisfied with that. The Big Green wants nothing more than a spot in the Frozen Four, a position it seemed to have a comfortable hold on just weeks ago when its two losses were the least in the country.
Dartmouth (16-4-2, 8-2-0 ECAC North) has notched a gritty win over Providence and a clutch victory over Harvard as of late, but these performances have been soured by a disappointing loss to New Hampshire and another to a tough Brown Bears squad last Saturday.
A similar pattern occurred last season, when Dartmouth traveled to Boston and Providence to take on the Crimson and the Bears, except the loss came on the first day. The team then went to Niagara Falls, N.Y., to take on the Purple Eagles, escaping with a split. Finding themselves with a string of home games to get their act together, the members of the 2000-2001 squad went undefeated for the remainder of the regular season.
This season, however, three of four pivotal February games were played at Thompson Arena, while the only road game was an hour south for the Granite State rivalry against New Hampshire. The Big Green dropped from fourth to fifth in the PairWise rankings after this series of ups and downs, and it seems that the team has a lot of patching up to do to have any chance to roar in the postseason.
The saving grace might be this weekend's venture to New York, where the Big Green will try to pull together and reestablish the dominance it showed at home against these teams, when it scored relentless 10-1 and 6-1 triumphs over Colgate and Cornell respectively.
Colgate (10-13-2, 1-7-2 ECAC North) has a misleading overall record because of the weak out-of-conference opponents the team plays in order to compensate for the beatings it takes from division opponents. Cornell (5-15-1, 4-7-1 ECAC North), on the flip side, is a much tougher team than its record indicates, especially since Dartmouth took the Big Red behind the woodshed on Jan. 12.
Cornell took Northeastern to overtime when the Huskies were still second in the nation, beat Harvard and Yale on the road, tied No. 7 Brown, and most recently lost to No. 10 Princeton by just one tally. Given these recent accomplishments and the improving, but sub-par play of the Big Green, it is crucial that Dartmouth plays its best hockey all weekend long.
"Cornell is a team that comes at you at a million miles an hour," senior co-captain Kim McCullough said.
"They are a small team that never lets up for a second, that can capitalize on its opponent's miscues, so we need to make sure that we play smart hockey in all three zones of the ice and keep consistent pressure on them."
"It's very important to win not only this weekend, but every weekend from here on out," added prolific scorer Carly Haggard '03, tops in points per game in the nation.
"It's a good chance for us to play a solid 60 minutes of hockey, something that we've been struggling with this year."
The Big Green will take up the more formidable challenge first as it skates against the Big Red Friday night at 7 p.m. After the game that could make or break the season, Dartmouth will take whatever it has left into the Colgate game on Saturday at 4 p.m.
