The Dartmouth women's hockey team headed down to Chestnut Hill on Tuesday night for a midweek battle with number 10 ranked Boston College. With a 3-2 win, Dartmouth continued its rebound from a tough loss to Princeton on Friday and validated its own number 8 national ranking.
While the Big Green emerged victorious, things didn't look good for the team in the early going. After a Dartmouth penalty just over a minute into the game, Boston College capitalized on the man advantage, taking a 1-0 lead.
While penalties would continue to be a problem, Dartmouth would rally.About three minutes later, Danielle Grundy '06 lit the lamp to even the score, and the momentum continued to shift violently in the Big Green's favor as Carrie Thompson '08 scored her second goal of the season to put Dartmouth up for good.
The rest of the period was mired in penalties and power plays. Dartmouth's power play continued to struggle, failing to score on three power play opportunities in the first period and going 0 for 4 on the night. In fact, during their six minutes with a man advantage, Dartmouth did not even outshoot BC, both squads managing only a single shot during the Dartmouth power plays.
"We struggled a bit early on in the game with our special teams," Coach Mark Hudak said.
The Big Green came out strong to begin the second period. Only 1:10 into the frame, Tiffany Hagge '06 scored what proved to be the game-winning goal, in what is becoming something of a tradition for the women's hockey team. Hagge, the captain, has tallied the game-winning goal in all three of Dartmouth's victories this season.
The two-goal lead was comfortable and must have disheartened the 77 fans reported to be in attendance, but the game was far from over. Midway through the second period, just after Meredith Batcheller '07 was slapped with her third penalty of the game and second for cross checking, BC scored to get within one. While they could not pull even, BC certainly made the stretch run interesting, with some help from the Big Green.
After the second period ended with no more scoring, Dartmouth spent much of the third on the penalty kill.Following an early penalty kill, the Big Green spent three of the last six minutes of the game playing a man down, including the last 1:11.
However, the penalty-killing unit held BC to three shots during the three penalties, and goalie Kate Lane '06 kept the Eagles off the board to preserve the win. Lane had a solid game, recording 24 saves. The BC goalkeeper Alison Quandt turned in a respectable 21 stops.
The game was a much needed test as the Big Green heads into their matchup this Saturday against top ranked St. Lawrence. While the team did not play particularly well in Chestnut Hill, Coach Hudak was pleased with the outcome.
"We were happy in the fact that we found a way to win the game. It was not pretty, but the team played with a ton of heart in the last part of the game and did a nice job when BC was really trying to mount a comeback," he said.
He also thought that the game pointed out a few key areas where the Big Green needs work.
"Our [special teams], forecheck, and D-zone coverage also seemed to improve as the game went on," Hudak said. "We'll continue to work on those aspects of the game this week as well as working towards using our speed off of transition a bit better."
