February 10, 2009
By Dave McMahon
Special to USAHockey.com
Harvard senior forward Sarah Vaillancourt stood mesmerized by Felix Potvin’s “sickest hands ever.”
The Cat, a goaltender who made the NHL All-Rookie team and went on to play in a pair of NHL All-Star Games in the 1990s, wowed Vaillancourt with his stickhandling prowess.
“He played forward with us all summer and he was incredible,” Vallaincourt said. “They had never actually played against a girl, so they didn’t know what that was like. Then I skated the puck around a few guys and they said ‘Where’s that coming from?’”
The impressively humble Vaillancourt could have respondedly appropriately, but a smile and a return to center ice for another drop of the puck worked well enough. She didn’t want to ruin her welcome.
After all, former NHL All-Stars Yanic Perreault and Jocelyn Thibault requested that Vaillancourt, the reigning winner of the Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award as the nation’s most outstanding player in women’s college hockey, join them in their skating sessions this past summer in their hometown of Sherbrooke, Quebec.
Vaillancourt, once again a potential candidate for the Patty Kazmaier Award, didn’t need much time to accept the offer, and was glad that to show the veterans that her hands aren’t, well, made of stone.
 “Usually during the summer, I don’t skate for about a month after the world championships,” said Vaillancourt, whose hometown is about a 45-minute drive from the Vermont border. “Then I’ll go to the rink twice a week, mostly on my own. This summer was a little different because I was playing against the NHL guys. Some days we’d have a practice, and other times we’d play 3-on-3. It was pretty tiring, but a lot of fun.”
If Vaillancourt brings one ingredient to the ice, it’s a combination of fun and passion. For tonight’s Beanpot final against Boston College, she also bring the remnants of a nasty cold that comes along with having been a part of 13 of her team’s last 14 goals. Vaillancourt leads the team with 36 points (16 goals, 20 assists) and is a team-high plus-14. She ranks second in the nation with 1.11 assists per game and sits third with 2.00 points per game.
She’s picking up a head of steam heading into the final weeks of the regular season. She scored the eighth hat trick of her career and collected four assists for a seven-point game in Harvard’s 8-0 victory over Boston University last Tuesday in the Beanpot. Two of her goals came on the power play, and she picked up four points in the third period alone.
On Friday, she assisted on both goals in Harvard’s 2-1 win over Yale before chalking up four points (2 goals, 2 assists) in a 4-0 win over Brown on Saturday.
Unfortunately for opponents, she doesn’t have a bad memory.
“We lost my sophomore year to BC in the third overtime during the first game. This is payback,” Vaillancourt said in a phone interview from her room on the 10th floor of a tower on campus that provides her with a superb view of Boston.
Her drive to excel simply flourishes on the ice.
“I think that’s why we play hockey—you always want to win,” she said. “Not just me or my teammates, but any of us in the women’s game. It’s a team sport, and you know that your teammates will do as much to prepare for a game as you will. You depend on them, and they depend on you.”
“It’s something you have within you. I don’t think there’s a special recipe for being competitive. It’s always there. I’m extremely competitive in practices and in games. The biggest part is that I’m so passionate about hockey. It’s easy to be competitive. I always have high expectations of myself, and I always want to bring my best.”
Vaillancourt grew up playing on boys’ teams. Those teams had some up and down years. By the time she captained her Peewee boys’ team, her squad had advanced to the Provincial championships. That was a long way from winning gold with Canadian women’s team at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Italy, but a start to greatness.
“Right when I started playing women’s hockey, I was always on successful teams,” she said.
As the reigning Patty Kazmaier Award winner, Vaillancourt has once again seen the women’s game grow.
“It was a new year for myself individually, but also for our team,” she said. “We were not expecting to go undefeated. Women’s hockey keeps improving every year, and I think it’s great that teams are getting better each year. I’m expecting the best every time I play, and I can say the same for our team.”
Vaillancourt’s start to her final college season was not ideal from a student-athlete’s standpoint. She played on Team Canada in the Four Nations Tournament and missed Harvard’s first four games. Another stint with the Canadian national team forced her to miss one more game.
“And we start so late to begin with here at Harvard, so it was hard,” she said. “That thew me off a little, I’m not going to lie. I’m building on every game, trying to help my teammates as much as I can. It’s my senior year, and to miss five games is pretty unfortunate, but I also love playing for my country.”
Vaillancourt’s immediate future likely won’t include implementation of the psychology degree that she’ll obtain this spring from Harvard.
“I would like to coach,” she said. “I can’t see myself away from the rink.”
After playing in her second Olympic Games in 2010 in Vancouver, she’ll aim to reload for another Games.
“I’m looking forward to playing the game and not having to worry about classes,” she said. “It’s been four really intense years of combining hockey and studies. It hasn’t always been easy for me. If my body will give me four more years, I’ll shoot for a third Olympics.”
The academic rigors that accompany a Harvard education were even more of a challenge for Vaillancourt. She attended the Pomfret School in Connecticut for two years before enrolling, simply to enhance her English language skills.
"It was pretty much a struggle my first year here,” she said. “I’ve always been right around 85 percent [as a student]. It’s gotten better every year. I went to a public high school in Quebec, and we would have English once a week for an hour, so I knew my verbs and tenses. Some of my teammates are so impressive in the classroom, some as pre-med students.”
Vaillancourt has made sure to keep her native tongue in tact while at school. In fact, she’s found some French literature classes to be of her liking.
“Speaking and writing French are things that I don’t want to lose, so I’ve been able to balance them with English,” she said. “There are so many people here that speak French.”
During her summers away from the ice, Vaillancourt can be found spending time with family and friends. Her older brother (Yann) and older sister (Annie) live within five minutes of mom and dad (Monique and Robert).
“My parents came to my prep school every weekend, and at Harvard, they’ve been to almost every game, too,” she said. “I’ve been very fortunate to have so much support from my family.”
Story courtesy of Red Line Editorial, Inc. |