Saturday afternoon at Meehan Auditorium, the Brown Bears proved to be more
than the Crimson could handle as they skated to a 4-2 win. After getting
out of their league opener yesterday with a tie against Northeastern, the
Bears have to be very happy with a three-point point weekend against two
of the toughest teams in the league.
 
The first period featured mostly end-to-end action, with both teams
showing some good speed as they pressed for the opposing net. Julie Iler
took a hooking penalty at 14:33 and Harvard unleashed their mighty power
play, which consisted mostly of feeding Olympians AJ Mleczko and Angela
Ruggiero at the point so they could blast huge slapshots at the net. Brown
goalie Ali Brewer proved she can stop anything as long as she can see it.
Brown then came up empty with a minute of 5-on-3 and the period ended
scoreless.
 
Early in the second period Ruggiero went into the box with a roughing
penalty and a 10-minute misconduct. Brown couldn't capitalize on this
power play but the loss of Ruggiero broke Harvard's stride. Brown
sophomore Cara Gardner went into the box for two consecutive penalties,
but the Crimson couldn't seem get their plan working without Ruggiero.
Meanwhile the Bears took advantage of the situation and started pouring on
the steam. Sophomore Kathleen Kauth (Kristy Zamora) put Brown on the board
when she put one up glove-side on Crimson goalie Crystal Springer at
11:54. Springer had a glove on it but couldn't hold on as it trickled in.
Shortly thereafter Claudia Asano went to the box for Harvard and Tamra
Jones (Tara Mounsey) took a shot from the left point and got it past a
screened Springer at 13:26 for the power-play goal.  At 16:07 Jill Graat
poked in a Julie Iler rebound to put Brown up 3-0.  Finally, Jennifer
Botterill put Harvard on the board with 14 seconds to go in the period
with an unassisted PPG. Although I couldn't see it from my point of view,
apparently this was actually off Mounsey's skate.
 
The Crimson regrouped between periods and came out fighting in the third,
and generally dominated play for most of the period. Melissa Rennison
added Brown's final goal at 2:33 when she collected a rebound from
Mounsey's slapper and slid a nice shot past a sprawled Springer. Gardner
took yet another penalty at 9:07 and an ensuing Harvard goal was waved off
for a crease violation. However, AJ Mleczko would tally Harvard's second
and final goal at 12:50, when she beat Brewer on a rebound.  Harvard made
a good effort in the remaining minutes (including two power plays). The
Bears looked a bit worn out as the driving Crimson continually beat them
to the puck, but did manage to hang on for the win.
 
There was a lot of uncertainty coming into this weekend for both the Brown
team and the fans. Several players were injured or recovering, last week's
exhibition effort was not especially impressive, and their first
non-exhibition games were against two of the top teams in the league.
Brown played very well, especially for the first weekend of the season.
The defense was firing on all cylinders today.  I was also impressed with
the freshman+ line of Meredith Ostrander-Zamora-Kauth. The former two are
big (6-foot-plus), fast and have great puckhandling skills. Ditto for
Kauth who was great as a freshman last year and seems to have improved
over the summer.
 
Harvard looked like a team that is built tightly around their core of
several highly-talented players, especially Mleczko and Ruggiero. However
they did not strike me as terribly deep beyond that and looked a bit lost
without them (see: second period). When they are together they can
definitely apply the pressure. This team is a legitimate condender in the
league this year.
 
Brown hosts Boston College and Dartmouth next Friday and Saturday evenings
at home in Meehan Auditorium.
 
Go Bruno!
Brian
 
 
 
Unofficial Brown Hockey web page: http://www.netspace.org/users/bfisk/hockey
 
--
Brian Fisk                                                [log in to unmask]
 
Brown Women's Hockey: 1998 ECAC Champions!
 
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