Welcome to this special guest edition of the hockey blog, as I step in to comment on the Harvard women's hockey team's play this Thanksgiving weekend.
1. The two goals by Katharine Chute is as good a testament as any to the interchangeability of this Crimson squad. Not to take anything away from the freshman center, but it's fair to say she's one of several players who could have been on the receiving end of Sarah Vaillancourt's passes. And that's what is so dangerous about this Crimson team - it doesn't really matter if a lot of players are having off-games, as the team only needs one or two to be a scoring threat.
2. Christina Kessler has now not given up a goal in 3 hours, 26 minutes, and 13 seconds of play (that's right, I looked it up). By any standards, that's a superlative shutout streak, although the Crimson defense made her job easy tonight by limiting shots on goal and largely keeping Clarkson in the neutral zone. Expect that shutout streak to end sometime tomorrow when they take on the potent St. Lawrence offense.
3. The Clarkson defense played surprisingly well considering they let up five goals. Well, I'm adjusting my standards considerably here, but considering how poorly you might have expected them to play from that final score, they in fact did quite a bit better than that. Harvard didn't have a ton of opportunities, but they took advantage of them masterfully. I'm not sure how repeatable a skill that is, but that's ultimately nitpicking what was a total deconstruction of what was supposed to be the tenth best team in the country.
Well, that's all for this one. Congratulations to Harvard women's hockey as they improve to 5-0 on the year on the strength of their most dominating performance yet. Special kudos go to Sarah Vaillancourt, Caitlin Cahow, Katharine Chute, and Christina Kessler.
Zak Kline and I will be back tomorrow to call the St. Lawrence game at 4:00. Coverage will start around 3:45. Thanks again to Nick Crowne for his excellent work producing tonight's game.
Listen to it here.
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