While most of Yale gears up for The Game on Saturday, the women’s hockey team will take on the Crimson Friday night at Ingalls Rink.
After splitting a pair of games in upstate New York last weekend, the Elis (1–5–1, 1–5–0 ECAC Hockey) are back at home to compete against Harvard and Dartmouth.
The Bulldogs grabbed their first win of the season last Saturday with a 2-1 victory against Union, earning them two points and 11th place in the conference standings.
“It was obviously nice to get that monkey off our backs and get that first win in the league,” head coach Hilary Witt said. “Hopefully we can build on it.”
The Elis also finally got their offense going last weekend, notching three goals between the two games. Forward Bray Ketchum ’11 had recorded the team’s only conference goal — against Quinnipiac on Nov. 7 — before forward Danielle Moncion ’13 and forward Caroline Murphy ’10 provided the offense for Yale last weekend.
Witt hopes the scoring trend will continue in this weekend’s games.
“Offensively we would like to have a balanced attack,” Witt said. “Last week we got contributions from Moncion, Murphy and [sophomore forward Becky] Mantell. We will continue to work to get production from every line.”
The Crimson (3–3–1, 3–3–0) are currently tied with RPI for 6th place in conference play. Harvard will enter the Friday night competition coming off a 7–2 win over Quinnipiac last Sunday and, more recently, a 1–1 tie against non-league opponent New Hampshire on Wednesday.
Crimson goaltender Christina Kessler is ranked No. 7 in the nation with a 1.72 goals against average after just more than 418 minutes in net. Harvard also boasts the fourth-best scoring defense in the country.
Dartmouth has tallied five points so far this season — good for eighth place in the conference standings. The Big Green (2–3–1, 2–3–1) had split results last weekend, beating Princeton 4–1 on Friday, but dropping a close 2–1 game to Quinnipiac the next day.
Dartmouth also features one of the country’s best rookies in forward Camille Dumais, who is nationally ranked No. 6 in points per game with a 0.83 average.
As for the Elis, Witt said she will continue to look for contributions from both veteran athletes like Murphy and younger players.
“We have a very balanced but young group,” Witt said. “We are always looking for people to step up as leaders — it doesn’t matter if they are a freshman, sophomore, junior or senior.”