HANOVER — The Eagles’ 1976 hit Life in the Fast Lane blared from Thompson Arena’s speaker system on Friday during the first intermission of the Dartmouth College women’s hockey game.
The Big Green was in anything but high gear against ECAC foe Princeton, however. A poor first period led to an eventual 7-0 loss.
A program that reached the 2011 ECAC title game has crumbled into irrelevance, although at 5-9-3 overall it has matched its victory totals from each of the past two seasons.
The Tigers, now 14-4-0 and 9-3-0 in conference competition, at times appeared to be on the power play despite the penalty boxes being empty.
Dartmouth coach Laura Schuler, a former Canadian Olympic boss who took her current job in 2016, gave backup goaltender Kayla Wormsbecher the start in what was only the junior’s fifth collegiate appearance.
Princeton opened the scoring during the seventh minute. A Dartmouth turnover slid into the high slot, and defensewoman Stef Wallace fired a 45-foot wrist shot over Wormsbecher’s glove.
The No. 7 Tigers doubled their lead three minutes later on their third shot. Annie Keuhl rushed down the left wing and whipped the puck inside the far post.
Wormsbecher was replaced by freshman Hannah Humphreys, who’s played 95 percent of her team’s minutes this season.
That’s been a lopsided statistic for Dartmouth during the past decade.
Only once during the past five years has the Big Green had a starting netminder who played fewer than 87 percent of her team’s minutes. Dartmouth has an overall record of 28-88-9 and an ECAC mark of 20-67-11 during that span.
“Whether it was Kayla or Hannah in goal, we needed to be better in front of them,” said Schuler, whose team is 2-6-3 in ECAC action this winter. “We tried to execute our systems, but (Princeton is) a really good team with two players on the Canadian senior national team, and I don’t think the score was reflective of how the game went.”
Princeton’s third goal came six minutes before the first intermission. Humphreys stopped a close-in shot from the left side but left a juicy rebound for Sarah Fillier to poke home.
The game’s fourth goal was a complete defensive breakdown during the second period’s ninth minute.
Senior defensewoman Bailee Brekke gave the puck away on the right sideboards, and Princeton worked it behind the net and into the slot.
An unguarded Mariah Keopple had plenty of time to pick the net’s upper left corner over Humphrey’s glove.
The rout was on four minutes before the second intermission when a Wallace shot from the left point slid along the ice and through Humphrey’s legs while a pair of players battled atop her crease.
Princeton scored twice more during the third period and finished with a 29-18 shot advantage.
“Our kids didn’t let up, and our energy was there,” Schuler said. “We’re more competitive, and the shots are more even than in the past. There are lopsided scores even in the NHL. That’s just hockey.”
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Notes: Attendance was announced at 563 but appeared to be roughly 200. … Dartmouth’s third goaltender is senior Emma Plumb, who played 16 games for the Big Green field hockey team as a freshman before leaving that program and hadn’t played college hockey before this season. … Dartmouth’s four-player senior class entered the college as a group of seven. Sara Lopez-Wheeler, Rose Falzone, Sabrina Huett and Cecilia Lopez left the program. … Princeton leads the teams’ series, 50-32-7. … The Big Green is on its third director of hockey operations in as many seasons. The latest is former Adrian (Mich.) College player Olivia Fox. Dartmouth, which has two assistant coaching slots in addition to the operations post, has seen Courtney Sheary, Chris Cobb, Morgan Illikainen, Matt Cunninghman and Matt Woodward occupy those jobs since Schuler’s 2016 arrival. Cobb left the paying job at Dartmouth for a volunteer slot at Colgate last summer.
Tris Wykes can be reached at twykes@vnews.com.