On Friday night in the Meehan Auditorium, the women’s ice hockey team (3-1, 1-1 ECAC) faced Princeton (1-3, 1-1 ECAC) in their first Ivy match of the season. After an intense battle, Brown came up short, losing 2-4 and catapulting Princeton ahead in the rankings.
Brown and Princeton were neck-and-neck in the first period, with the Tigers barely edging Bruno out 9-8 in shots on goal. But throughout the latter two periods, Princeton’s offense pulled away, dominating Brown 13-6 and 13-10 in shots on goal, respectively.
Despite the loss, Head Coach Melanie Ruzzi felt that the team “executed much of our game plan,” she wrote in an email to The Herald.
“Ultimately Princeton made one more play than we did,” Ruzzi added.
The game opened with a flurry of shots. Less than 30 seconds into the match, Jade Iginla ’26 stole the puck and dashed toward the Princeton goal. She fired the first shot of the game, with the puck straying wide left. Reclaiming possession, Princeton’s Hannah Fetterolf streaked down the left flank of Brown’s goal and launched at close range, but Brown goalkeeper Rory Edwards ’27 blocked the shot.
Over the next 10 minutes, the two teams were deadlocked, but the game was far from passive. They racked up a combined total of 18 attempted shots, with Bruno taking 10 of them.
Despite Bruno’s slight edge in aggressive plays, disaster struck just over halfway into the first period. After an unsuccessful Brown attack, Princeton’s Emerson O’Leary seized the puck from behind her own goal. Feinting to the side, she darted past Monique Lyons ’28 and passed to Megan Healy, who stumbled and lost control over the puck. In the resulting scramble, the Tigers’ Issy Wunder snatched it and slammed the puck into the net from close range, marking the first goal of the game.
But Brown recovered swiftly. With just over 2 minutes remaining in the period, Princeton’s Mackenzie Alexander attempted to score, but Lyons stood in her way. Instead of simply deflecting it, she charged up the rink, with three Tigers in hot pursuit. Princeton chased her to no avail, and as Lyons drifted past the goal, she cleanly knocked the puck in, bringing the intense match to a tie.
An invaluable asset to the team, Lyons finished last year’s regular season ranked second in the country in goals per game among first-year players. She was also named to the All-USCHO Rookie Team.
Ruzzi noted that Lyons “made big plays at both ends of the ice” and hopes “that USA Hockey is taking notice of her.”
Lyons attributed her successful goal to the team’s rigorous preparation, which “made all the difference,” she wrote in an email to The Herald.
“During the game I knew exactly where to be, read the play, blocked the shot and used my speed to beat the Princeton players for a breakaway,” Lyons added.
With the score tied going into the second period, Brown kept the momentum going, winning 3 of the 5 faceoffs that took place during the first 4 minutes. Princeton maintained a strong defense, preventing Brown from capitalizing on these opportunities.
Four minutes into the period, Princeton saw an opportunity to take back control of the game. For the next 30 seconds, Princeton hammered away at Bruno’s defense, taking three shots. As Edwards fell to her knees in an effort to block Princeton’s constant stream of shots, she left a critical opening which O’Leary snuck the puck through, earning the Tigers’ second goal of the game.
Down by 1, the Bears seized a golden opportunity when Princeton’s Jane Kuehl was sent to the penalty box for 2 minutes due to roughing. Rosie Klein soon followed due to interference. With a two-man advantage, Bruno’s Victoria Damiani ’28 charged toward the goal, flinging the puck but narrowly missing to the left. Iginla recovered the puck for the Bears, and after being chased out of the goal radius, set up a beautiful assist to Margot Norehad ’27.
“I didn’t hesitate when Jade passed me the puck,” Norehad wrote in an email to The Herald. “I was just in the mental state of, ‘Ok, I am scoring this.’”
Norehad was positioned right in front of the goal, and in spite of the stoic line of Tigers in front of her, she slammed the puck into the net, leveling the score at 2-2.
With the teams deadlocked going into the final period, the stakes were high. In the first 9 minutes, the Bears appeared to be marginally more dominant than Princeton, taking 9 of the 14 shots — yet this would change in a matter of moments as Princeton’s Katherine Khramtsov defended an attempt to score by Miranda Calderone ’27 and, deftly sweeping the puck with her stick, raced toward Brown’s goal.
As Khramtsov rushed down the rink, her teammate Kuehl kept pace with her. Khramtsov headed to the left and knocked the puck right into Kuehl’s path as she dashed toward the goal. In the blink of an eye, Kuehl had struck the puck past Edwards, catapulting Princeton into a 3-2 lead.
For the rest of the game, Bruno struggled to match Princeton’s score for a third time, even after taking 8 consecutive shots in just the last 2 minutes. But any hopes of Brown making a comeback were dashed when, with just 17 seconds left on the clock, Princeton scored their fourth and final goal on an empty net, created during Brown’s attempt to increase their offensive numbers.
The final score rested at 2-4.
The Tigers “did a great job on capitalizing on (Brown’s) defensive coverage mistakes,” Lyons wrote in a message to The Herald. She added that Princeton’s “defensemen are active all over the ice,” making them a tough team to contend with.
While Bruno’s offensive tactics were able to generate several “threatening chances,” Ruzzi explained that the team will aim to improve at their “coverage in extended defensive zone shifts.”
Just a day after the tough loss, Brown bounced back against Quinnipiac, defeating the Bobcats 1-0 with a goal by India McDadi ’26 sealed the game and improved the Bears’ ECAC standings.
Brown will travel to New York to face Colgate on Halloween. The next day, the Bears will take on Cornell in Ithaca.
Looking ahead to the Bears’ next match, Ruzzi said that “the team will be ready to go.”
Norehad echoed this sentiment, adding that Bruno would head into their next game “with a new start, new score and an open mind.”
