The women's hockey team concluded its season and capped the careers of captains Hayley Moore '08 and Rylee Olewinski '08, assistant captain Emilie Bydwell '08 and Heather Lane '08 with a weekend sweep at home.
"It was awesome," Moore said. "There's not any other way that I would rather have it."
Playing only for pride after being eliminated from playoff contention the week before, the Bears earned a 2-1 victory over Rensselaer on Friday and a 3-1 triumph over Union the following day to secure their first wins at Meehan Auditorium this season. The sweep improved Brown's record to 5-19-5 overall and 4-12-4 in the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference, placing the team 10th out of 12.
Still, the Bears needed a little luck to beat the Engineers on Friday.
"I think it was about time the hockey gods smiled favorably on us," said Head Coach Digit Murphy. "I'm not going to say that was the best game we ever played. We've lost games that we should have won or that we should have had some luck in, and finally maybe the tide's turning a little bit."
Fortune played a big role as the Bears opened the scoring 3:08 into the game. Erica Kromm '11 took the puck out from behind the net to the right side, where she lifted a shot that hit Rensselaer goaltender Ashley Mayr in the chest, dropped to the ice and trickled in behind her.
"Jumping on them early and getting them down on the road was a big, big thing for us," said assistant captain Nicole Stock '09, a Herald contributing writer. "We did a really good job of forechecking there in the beginning, and we got a bounce our way, finally."
Shortly after failing to take advantage of a long power play that included 57 seconds of a five-on-three advantage, Brown doubled its lead at 15:12 when Sasha Van Muyen '10 passed from behind the net into a crowd of players in front of the crease. Erin Connors '10 was there to one-time the pass into the back of the net, giving the Bears goals on their only two shots of the period. Maggie Suprey '11 also picked up an assist on the play.
But Rensselaer cut the lead in half with a power-play goal with two minutes left in the first period. Whitney Naslund broke up the right side and beat the screened Stock.
"Those are always tough shots because your defenseman doesn't close a gap the right way, and then they use them as a screen," Stock said. "She made a nice shot, right inside the post. Sometimes you've just got to hand your hat to them and move on."
Stock and the Bears did just that. In a penalty-filled weekend in which Brown was whistled for 18 infractions and its opponents for 17, the Bears had to kill off a pair of five-on-three advantages in the second period to preserve their 2-1 lead.
As the Bears clung to the tenuous lead, Stock made 15 of her 35 saves in the third period, including a nifty move with her glove that deflected one high shot "like a little rainbow over the net," as she described it. But the pressure really mounted with 3:38 left, when a slashing call on Jenny Cedorchuk '10 gave the Engineers a power play. Brown killed it, but Rensselaer pulled Mayr for an extra attacker and called a time-out with 1:31 left. The coaches tried an unusual ploy to keep the Bears loose.
"We drew up a play that we typically do when we're down a goal to clear it out of the zone," Murphy said. "(I said), 'Let's be aggressive and try to make a play as opposed to defend a play.' ... You look in their eyes and they're hungry, and you know that they have the ability to do it now and it's just about executing. I was really proud of them."
The Bears never quite cleared the puck, but they did sufficiently disrupt the Engineers' offense. After Stock pounced on a rebound sitting loose in the crease with 24.2 seconds left, Rensselaer couldn't manage another shot.
Brown tried to take some momentum into its second game, against Union. But the visitors struck first, scoring in a four-on-four situation only 2:59 into the game.
From that point on, the Bears mowed down the Dutchwomen as if they were a field of tulips. Brown answered with the tying goal 1:43 later. After passes by Olewinski and Moore, Van Muyen took a shot from the right point that appeared to deflect off of Olewinski's skate in front of the net and past Union goalie Lundy Day.
The early offense quieted down until Brown took advantage of a power play with 1:27 left in the first period. Moore took the puck in from the left side to the front of the net and waited before beating Day with a low shot for her 13th goal of the season. Andrea Hunter '10 and Cedorchuk picked up assists on the play.
The Bears padded their lead with an insurance goal in a five-on-three advantage 2:33 into the second period on Kromm's sixth goal of the season. Moore added her third point of the game on her 15th assist of the season, while Olewinski tallied her second point on her ninth assist. Still, a two-goal lead wasn't enough for Murphy.
"I kept hammering them to try to get the fourth (goal), because I was trying to get the fourth line in," she said. "A two-goal lead, they say, is a deadly lead, because if the other team scores then they're knocking at your door."
The Bears had two more good chances to get the extra tally. As the power play continued after Kromm's goal, Jaclyn Small '11 took a shot from the point that appeared to hit the crossbar, dropped to the ice and caused a scrum in front of the net that ended when Connors was whistled for goaltender interference. Then, midway through the third period, Moore appeared to score her second goal, but the play was waived off because she committed a tripping penalty just before the shot.
Ultimately, it didn't matter that Brown wasn't able to score the fourth goal, partly because Stock made the lead stand up. Early in the third period during a Bears' power play, Stock stretched out to deflect a shot with her leg pads, tallying her 1000th save of the season on the play. After making 17 saves in the game, she finished the season with 1004 saves, shattering the previous Brown record of 681, set by Ali Brewer '00 in 1999-2000. Stock also joined Union's Day as the only two goalies in the country to eclipse 1000 saves this season.
After the game, the Bears held an emotional ceremony on the ice honoring the seniors. Moore, who finished her career at Brown eighth all-time in goals (69) and points (133), was awarded the Panda Cup for "outstanding team spirit, good sportswomanship and dedication to playing ice hockey," as the media guide describes it.
Both of the captains expressed a wide range of feelings about the end of their careers.
"It's a lot of mixed emotions, I guess," Moore said. "It's really tough because I've had such a great time here with all my teammates for four years, but it's nice to see that we finished on a good note."
The season may have just ended, but already Murphy brims with optimism about the prospects of next year's team.
"I think we'll be pretty run-and-gun," she said. "I think we're going to be a team that just comes at you; we're going to have a lot of depth. We've got Stock in the back. The D's going to be a year older, so they're going to be that much more confident. I think we lose a lot with our seniors, but there are a lot of other teams that are going to lose a lot more. I think we're definitely going to finish, I'd say top half, minimum," in the ECAC.
