Beanpot Magic Continues: Icemen Belt Maine, 4-1

The beat goes on.

The Harvard hockey team continued its winning ways last night, snapping an important ECAC victory from the jaws of the University of Maine Black Bears, 4-1, at the Bright Center.

Goals by Dave, Connors, Shayne Kukulowicz, Mike Watson and Greg Olson, and (once again) the near-flawless play of Crimson netminder Wade Lau, helped boost the Crimson's ECAC record to 6-9 (9-11 overall), inching them one step closer to a playoff spot. Maine, the fourth-ranked team in the East, dropped to 10-6 ECAC (20-7 overall).

Harvard came out in the first period in a post-Beanpot daze, looking more like a high school J.V. team than the Beanpot champs, but Maine wasn't exactly burning the bulbs out of the red lights either. The Black Bears forced the Crimson out of its wide-open skating style and into a push-and-shove match, which is more to the Maine team's liking.

Sure enough, the man that Massachusetts lost, Marblehead native Gary Conn, put the Black Bears on the board first with his 24th goal of the season at 5:26 of the opening stanza, on power play, blasting a slapshot from just outside the left circle, off Lau and into the net.

But the Crimson's Dave Connors took a pass from linemate Dave Burke and laced a 10-footer past Maine goalie Jim Tortorella at 15:17 to tie the score at one.

The second period started like a contest in who could make the puck wobble more, with each team flipping it back and forth across center ice. But at 7:45, the Crimson's Shayne Kukulowicz decided enough was enough.

The freshman winger picked up the puck along the right boards and skated into and through the Maine defense, beating Tortorella on the stick side to give Harvard a never-look-back, 2-1 lead.

"Instant Karma" broke the game open at 8:24 of the third period, when Watson and Olson worked a pretty give-and-go for a rare Crimson power-play goal.

Watson grabbed a loose puck along the boards and sent it to Olson behind the goal line, breaking towards the net as he let the pass go. Olson, without any hesitation, put the puck right back on Watson's stick out in front, and from then on it was all net.

The Crimson's final goal came at 19:36, when Olson, Mr. Empty-netter himself, took a Burke rebound off the backboards and calmly slid it into the net vacated by Tortorella only a minute before. The goal gives Olson a team-leading 12 on the year. THE NOTEBOOK: The weary Crimson meets Yale tonight at 7:30 in yet another crucial ECAC contest and its final home game of the season...Fourteen penalties made for a real sloppy game last night...Tortorella turned away 39 Crimson shots. Lau finished with 27 saves...In action yesterday afternoon at the Bright Center, the Harvard J.V.'s came back from a 4-1 second period deficit to topple the College of Dupage, raising the Crimson's record to 13-0-1. Three goals in the first two-and-a-half minutes of the third period, by Dale Valicenti, Paul Yeomelakis and Bob Poll's led the Crimson's comeback surge past the Chicago school. Supposedly, at least according to the Dupage jerseys, the Chicagoans were NCAA Division III champs last year. Except there is no such thing. In any event, it can be said without much doubt now that the Harvard J.V.'s are probably the number one junior varsity squad in the country. It makes you wonder...