After defeating Harvard the night before, No. 10 women’s hockey completed the weekend sweep, beating winless Dartmouth 4-0. With the win, Cornell (6-3-1, 5-1-0 ECAC) moves to second in the ECAC standings and remains atop the Ivy League.
“We played really well. We are coming together really well, so everyone is in good spirits,” said senior defender Ashley Messier.
Like it did on Friday, Cornell got on the board first and controlled the opening period.
After picking up an early slashing penalty, sophomore forward Delaney Fleming exited the penalty box on a mission. Just 20 seconds after her penalty ended, Fleming picked up the puck in the neutral zone, skated by Dartmouth defenders into the offensive zone, then fired a wrist shot that went bar down and into the back of the net.
Two minutes later, freshman forward Lindzi Avar tacked on a second goal of the period after a scrum in front of the net. The score was Avar’s third straight home game with a goal and her fifth of the season.
Avar, who was named ECAC Rookie of the Week earlier in the season, credited her teammates for her strong play.
“I just saw it [the puck] standing there, and I was like: ‘I’m going to lunge for it,’ and I got lucky with it so I poked it in five hole,” Avar said. “If you watch all the goals, I’ve been set up on every single one and so I thank my linemates and my teammates for getting me the puck.”
In the waning seconds of the first period, a Dartmouth skater was sent to the penalty box for holding, setting up the Red’s first power play of the afternoon. Cornell’s power play, which went 1/4 the night before, was unable to solve Dartmouth’s penalty kill which entered the weekend fifth-worst in the nation.
After the impressive offensive showing in the first period, Cornell’s defense was the story of the second. First, the Red killed another Big Green penalty. Then, sophomore goaltender Annelies Bergmann made an impressive save on a Dartmouth skater who was in alone on the Cornell netminder.
“I think our comradery is really good,” Messier said when asked about what was working well for Cornell’s defensive unit. However, Messier went on to credit the entire team for allowing just two goals in the past five games. “It’s kind of top-down. Our forwards are really good defensively which makes it really easy for the D to play good defensively. So it’s kind of a 27-person effort.”
Minutes later, after another unsuccessful Cornell power play, senior forward Gabbie Rud broke through the neutral zone alone and skated in on the Dartmouth net with just goaltender Meredith Jensen in front of her. Rud fired a hard shot, but it rang the goalpost and bounced away from the net.
Cornell’s offense proceeded to threaten over the next three minutes before Fleming picked up a second penalty, this time for slashing. The Cornell penalty kill successfully defended Dartmouth’s third power play of the game, and the Red took a 2-0 lead into the second intermission.
For the first 10 minutes of the third period, the Red dominated play, peppering the Dartmouth net with shots. Eventually, Cornell broke through. In the low slot, Avar received a pass from senior forward Kaitlin Jockims and wristed the puck by Jensen to extend the lead.
Then, just moments after limping off the ice with an apparent leg injury, junior forward Mckenna Van Gelder, who had two assists the night before, flicked a shot from the right faceoff circle into the net. The two goals came just 76 seconds apart.
Avar’s second goal of the afternoon gave her the team lead in goals, and she was praised by head coach Doug Derraugh ’91 after the game.
“I think one of the things we were looking for, especially with the way the game is going with the PWHL now being so physical, when we saw Lindzi we felt like she would really address a need for more physicality,” Derraugh said. “She’s got a real heavy shot. … [There are] lots of great things about her and she has fit in well.”
Cornell killed one last penalty and the game ended 4-0 in favor of the Red. With the win, Cornell secured its second straight six-point weekend, with both sweeps coming against Ivy foes.
Bergmann made 17 saves in net for the Red, en route to her fifth shutout of the year which is tied for second-most nationally.
Up next for Cornell will be a tough challenge on the road versus No. 7 Quinnipiac and Princeton. The Bobcats will be looking for revenge after Cornell swept them at home in the ECAC quarterfinals last spring.
“They always [have] good goaltending, they play a real hard defensive style, they make it really difficult to create scoring opportunities, and they’ve got some players that can really shoot the puck,” Derraugh said. “They have got all the ingredients, that’s why they are a top-10 team in the country. And they are especially tough at home, so it will be a really good test for us here early in the season.”
Cornell will take on Quinnipiac in Hamden, Connecticut next Friday at 6 p.m., then will travel to New Jersey to take on the Tigers the next day at 3 p.m. Both games will be streamed live on ESPN+.