On Saturday afternoon in the Meehan Auditorium, the women’s ice hockey team (7-2-1, 3-2-1 Eastern College Athletic Conference) edged past Harvard (5-4-1, 3-4-1 ECAC) in a thrilling 4-3 conference match-up. Monique Lyons ’28 was hailed the hero as she notched the game-winner in overtime for her second goal of the game.
The win marks the team’s fourth consecutive victory and third overtime win thus far this season. As the season presses on in full November swing, Brown currently stands at No. 13 in national rankings and No. 7 in the ECAC.
With a whopping 4-0 victory against Dartmouth just one day before facing Harvard, the Bears entered Saturday’s matchup with momentum in their favor. A battle between two ECAC powerhouses, the game lived up to the hype from start to finish.
Energy, intensity and scoring were high from the opening faceoff. Just over 6 minutes into the game, the Crimson struck first. Capitalizing on a failed clearance by the Bears, Harvard charged toward the net and overwhelmed the unprepared Bruno defense to steal a 1-0 lead.
But Harvard wasn’t ahead for long. Less than 2 minutes later, a penalty on the Crimson gave Bruno a power play. Harvard is one of the nation’s top power-killing teams — the Crimson entered Saturday’s game having allowed only 2 goals on 25 power plays — but Lyons didn’t let that stop her. With a nifty wrister from the right wing that zipped past the screened Harvard goalie, Lyons put Brown on the board and tied the game at 1-1.
“Offensively, we generated a lot of chances, forechecked hard and maintained puck possession,” Lyons wrote in an email to The Herald. But given Harvard’s offensive success, Lyons added that the Bruno defense “could have improved by boxing out and picking up sticks more.”
Just 27 seconds after Lyons’s goal, the Crimson responded. From behind the cage, Harvard’s Bella Finnegan found teammate Morgan McGathey at the top of the crease for a close finish past Bruno goalie Anya Zupkofska ’28, giving the Crimson a 2-1 lead.
But the avalanche of goals did not stop there — less than 4 minutes later, Bruno retaliated with force. After back-to-back saves by the Harvard goalie, Lyons recovered the puck on the left alley and found Isabella Gratzl ’29 — last week’s ECAC Defender of the Week — in the center. Slotting the puck in the back of the net, Gratzl tied the game, recording her third career goal in the process.
In that 6-minute span, the teams collectively earned 4 total goals. But in the following minutes, the rate of scoring died down and the game remained deadlocked for the rest of the first period.
The second period opened with the same fury and intensity of the first — just without any accompanying goals. Despite a total of 2 power plays and 16 shots by Brown in the second period, none of the opportunities came to fruition. On the other side of the ice, Brown’s defense held strong, anchored by Zupkofska’s whopping 25 saves over the course of the night.
The teams spent most of the second period trading relatively equal opportunities without success. But with about 3 minutes left in the period, Harvard took the lead. A failed clearance by Brown off the boards sent the puck to a wide open Crimson player, who finished the one-timer to make it 3-2.
“We were at our best when we played a fast, north-south game and when we initiated contact at the puck,” Head Coach Melanie Ruzzi wrote in an email to The Herald. “We allowed lapses in our game and were guilty of some ill-advised puck plays, giving Harvard opportunities that they capitalized on.”
Throughout period three, Brown tried to claw its way back before time expired. With less than 6 minutes left in regulation play, the Bears’ golden opportunity arose when Brown went a woman-down for a Harvard power play.
In a clutch moment, India McDadi ’26 emerged with the puck, breaking up the ice and playing a gorgeous give-and-go with Jade Iginla ’26 to maneuver around the Crimson defense. Crashing toward the net after getting the puck back, McDadi juked the Harvard goalie left, then backhanded right into the net to tie it 3-3 with just a few minutes left.
“Any goal is special, but given the circumstances … this one felt extra meaningful,” McDadi wrote. “You could feel the momentum shift. There was this unwavering confidence on the bench that we could come back and win, and that energy made the goal even better.”
With time winding down, both teams looked to notch one in for the victory before the final whistle blew. Brown scarily committed a hooking penalty with just over 1 minute to play — sending Cadence Richards ’29 off the ice for the rest of the period. But even a woman down, the Bears managed to heroically thwart the Crimson’s opportunity, and to overtime it went.
After killing off the rest of the Harvard power play in the first minute of overtime, it was all eyes on the prize, with both teams fighting to be the first to score and mark a tally in the win column.
Ultimately, it was Lyons that sent the Crimson home with under 2 minutes to play in overtime. Sam Broz ’27 initiated a sweeping dodge across the right wing, which allowed Lyons to find a seam in center ice, receive the puck and effortlessly slam the game-winner into the bottom left corner of the net.
The game-winning score marked Lyons’s second goal of the match as well as her team-leading seventh goal of the season.
“I was so excited when I scored the game-winner,” Lyons wrote. “It felt amazing to beat an Ivy League and ECAC opponent and take home the weekend sweep.”
“Harvard is a strong team, so we knew it would take compete and resilience, and I thought we showed both,” McDadi wrote in an email to The Herald. “A huge part of our identity is grit, and being able to push until the very last second felt true to who we are.”
The Bears look to continue the win streak in their next match this Friday against Clarkson at 6 p.m. in New York.
“Our coaching staff is very much focused on holding the team accountable to playing to an identity consisting of a number of details and habits,” Ruzzi wrote. “The team has high expectations led by our captains, so we have to maintain a focus on taking care of the process and having fun along the way.”
