This past weekend the women’s ice hockey team (12-9-2, 8-6-2 Eastern College Athletic Conference) delivered two drastically different performances in a pair of nationally ranked conference matchups at home: a 3-1 disappointment against No. 10 Cornell (12-8-2, 8-5-1 ECAC) on Friday and a 6-2 triumph over No. 12 Colgate (12-12-1, 7-6-1 ECAC) on Saturday.
Following the weekend’s games, the Bears surpassed the Big Red in the ECAC standings, moving to No. 5 with seven games left to play in the regular season.
After dropping the season’s first Cornell matchup in November, the Bears looked to even the season series as the puck dropped at Meehan Auditorium Friday night. Instead, the Big Red jumped out to an early lead, which they rode all the way to victory.
“The team generated a good amount of offense on Friday and out-chanced Cornell in terms of grade-A opportunities to score,” Head Coach Melanie Ruzzi wrote in an email to The Herald. “Cornell’s defense did a good job of playing physical and forcing us to work for our chances, but ultimately, hitting posts and getting stopped on two breakaways was really the difference in the game.”
About eight minutes into the opening period, the Big Red found themselves on a two-on-two breakaway. Hurtling toward Brown’s goal, Cornell sent the puck on-target twice — and was denied both times by Bruno goaltender Rory Edwards ’27 –– before slipping a third attempt through the bottom right corner of the net.
Just over two minutes into the second period, the Big Red doubled their advantage. After Edwards deflected a head-on shot, Cornell forward Nora Curtis crashed the crease and snuck in a score under the Brown goalie.
Despite earning a power play with six minutes of the period remaining, the Bears remained scoreless following a blocked attempt by Monique Lyons ’28 and a missile of a shot clattering off the post by Margot Norehad ’27. Ten more shots in the final five minutes of the second period still did not yield a score for Brown.
Less than four minutes into the final period, the Big Red all but secured the contest. From behind the goal, Cornell’s Grace Dwyer managed to redirect the puck off Edwards into the net for another point.
On a power play with just over eleven minutes remaining in the match, facing a 3-0 goal deficit, the Bears finally got through Cornell goaltender Annelies Bergmann. A speedy shot by Norehad bounced off the stalwart Bergmann, and Lyons managed to put the puck over the goal line.
But the Bruno attack failed to build upon the momentum. Bergmann went on to save 11 more shots over the latter half of the third period, and the Big Red skated out with a wire-to-wire win in their pockets.
If the story of Friday’s loss to Cornell was failing to convert shots into goals, then Saturday’s domination of Colgate was written by a different pen. Scoring six times –– the Bears’ highest tally this season –– Brown overwhelmed the Raiders, who only managed two goals.
“No real adjustments were made for the Colgate game because we were generating threatening scoring chances,” Ruzzi wrote. “Sometimes getting that first one can open up the scoring, and I think Margot Norehad ’27 got us rolling with the first two goals of the game.”
Norehad notched the first tally just ten minutes into the match. On a solo breakaway, she weaved through two Colgate defenders and slapped a shot, which neatly ricocheted bar-down across the goal line.
“I was pretty tired and didn’t have enough energy to beat the defense wide,” Norehad recalled in an email to The Herald. “My goal was to get at least a shot on goal, but (I) looked up and saw the middle was open, so I cut to the middle and picked my corner.”
About five minutes into the contest, the Colgate attack sent a dangerously angled puck toward the bottom-right corner of the net, but Edwards squared up and defended the goal. Throughout the night, Edwards continued to display a resolute performance, recording 32 saves.
Edwards did not make any major adjustments between Friday and Saturday, she wrote in an email to The Herald. Instead, she focused on “keeping things simple, talking to the team and keeping the energy up.”
The second period was all Bruno. During the first power play of the contest, Olivia Fantino ’28 found Norehad racing up the left side of the rink. Norehad received and immediately redirected the puck to the top right corner of the net for her second goal of the game.
About a minute and a half later, the Bears continued to show off their elegant puck movement, as India McDadi ’26 stole the puck from Colgate and dished it off to Jade Iginla ’26, who snuck it into the right side of the net.
Keeping their foot on the gas and the Raiders on their heels, Brown attacked again and again. With nine minutes left in the period, Lyons moved the puck away from Brown’s goal line and flew down the rink along the left wall. In a two-on-one breakaway, Lyons feigned a pass to her teammate, instead keeping the puck herself and scoring to bring Brown a fourth point.
Bruno found paydirt yet again two minutes later. Skating up the right side, McDadi found Isabella Gratzl ’29, who had no problem sending the puck into the open left side of the net.
After Colgate scored a goal on a power play, the tally was 5-1. As the clock turned to the final period, it was clear the Bears had pulled out of the Raiders’ reach. An exchange of goals in the third period, including an empty-netter by Lyons, was all it took for Brown to take the 4-goal advantage to the final whistle.
“We feel like winning in general is valuable,” Ruzzi added. “But (it) certainly feels good to take points from a team ahead of us in the standings.”
The Bears will look to continue their high-scoring streak at home against RIT on Saturday at 1 p.m.
