In the biggest game remaining in its regular season, No. 1 Harvard snapped a 1-1 tie with a 5 on 3 goal midway through the first period and held on for the 2-1 win over No. 4 Dartmouth. With the win, Harvard kept it’s No. 1 ranking in both the USCHO.com Division I Women’s Poll as well as the USCHO.com Pairwise Rankings, a barometer for NCAA tournament selection.
No. 2 Minnesota-Duluth won a pair of games against host St. Cloud, and No. 3 Minnesota squeaked by visiting Ohio State, setting the stage for a classic battle for WCHA supremecy between these two heated rivals. The Bulldogs lead Minnesota in the conference standings by two points, with the final regular-season match-up between the two teams happening this weekend in Duluth.
After losing the close game with Harvard, Dartmouth bounced back with a 3-0 blanking of Brown, putting Big Green netminder Amy Ferguson all alone at No. 2 in career shutouts for a Dartmouth goaltender. The Big Green stand at No. 4 in both the poll and the PWR.
All ten ranked teams will see action in the coming week. Besides the WCHA bout between Minnesota-Duluth and Minnesota, No. 1 Harvard battles with No. 6 St. Lawrence for a pair of ECAC contests. Non-conference games are the rule in Hockey East, as No. 5 New Hampshire plays Niagara, and No. 9 Providence plays a home-and-home series with Quinnipiac.
The USCHO.com Poll is compiled by U.S. College Hockey Online, and consists of 15 voters, including 11 coaches of Division I programs and four women’s hockey writers.
The Pairwise Ranking attempts to mimic the method used by the NCAA Selection Committee to determine participants for the NCAA Division I women’s hockey tournament. The PWR compares only those at or above .500, judging them by five criteria: record against common opponents, record in last 16 games, head to head competition, record against other teams at or above .500, and the Ratings Percentage Index (RPI).
The PWR can be reformatted and redistributed by any media outlet or person, provided USCHO’s URL (http://www.uscho.com/) accompanies the results.
