Re: Harvard Crimson Women 2012-2013
The team's results described above, in terms of consistency against each tier of opposition, lack of any embarassing losses, and goals allowed reflect, I think, Katey Stone's strategy for dealing with the loss of Pucci and Gedman, given the remaining personnel the team had.
On the defensive side, that strategy involved:
1. Calling on three Ds with two-way skills to play Zdeno Chara-like minutes each and every game;
2. Calling on the other Ds, including a converted F, to provide consistent stay-at-home defense;
3. Calling on the Fs to buy into relentless skating, forechecking, puck possession, backchecking and battling for take-aways;
that, together with nearly flawless goaltending, resulted in a goals-allowed performance rivalling Minnesota's.
This defensive strategy kept the team close against top-5 opponents (2.13 GA) and shut down all other opponents (0.86 GA).
This bespeaks astute coaching and gutsy, disciplined players.
Where it proved impossible to fully compensate for the loss of Pucci and Gedman was on offense. No question that, with the two of them added to the blue line, the D's scoring production, and that of the whole team, would have been considerably larger. Instead of seeing Edney only occasionally down low on the power play (shades of Ruggiero, Banfield and their successors) , think of the luxury of having five offensive-minded Ds to work into the power play. Think of Pucci knifing through the attacking zone.
No question that low goal-scoring against top-5 opponents has been the team's Achilles heel (although those teams' defensive strength is of course one reason why they're top-5 teams). I suspect that the addition of Pucci and Gedman would have helped greatly. But it's probably no use wishing that some of Harvard's disciplined defensive whiz Fs could be exchanged for an accomplished "snipa" or two, because that would just open up chinks in the consistency of the team's defense: even if Phil Kessel himself claimed to be Amanda's long-lost college-eligible twin sister and suited up for the Crimson, I suspect the team's goal differential would have thereby suffered.
And it's not as though Harvard's fast-skating, puck-battling defensive style isn't fun to watch in its own right: it's about as far from trapping as you can get, the backchecker simply catches up to the puckcarrier, strips away the puck and launches a counterattack.
(Note to Minnesota fans: the dig at Phil Kessel isn't meant as a reflection on any of his siblings, it's just a parochial Boston reference to Phil's years as a blithely one-way player, indeed a poster-child one-way player, on an otherwise proud hardworking lunchpail Bruins squad).
It is ironic because that kind of talk is what got Hockey East started on the men's side back in '83. The Ivies wanted to split off from the rather unwieldy 17 team ECAC so the newly forged Hockey East schools said the heck with that and left to start their own conference before getting left in the dust. And then Hockey East starts a women's division in 2002...granted there is a 20 year lapse before the women's division was formed, thanks to the upgrade from club to D1 for several schools. But essentially talk of the Ivies splitting off led to the foundation of Hockey East.
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