M. Hockey Sits Alone Atop ECACs

This weekend the Harvard men’s hockey team was grateful that hockey games last for 60 minutes and not 59.

On Friday night against St. Lawrence, sophomore winger Tyler Kolarik scored his first goal of the season in dramatic fashion, breaking a 1-1 tie with just 21 seconds left in the game to give Harvard (4-4-2, 4-2-2 ECAC) a 2-1 victory.

The next night, it looked as if the Crimson was headed for its third loss in four games before junior center Dominic Moore pounded a rebound past Clarkson goaltender Mike Walsh with just three seconds remaining on the clock to tie it up at 2-2, sending the game into what would be a scoreless overtime.

The win and tie gave the Crimson three points in the ECAC standings and sole possession of first place.

Mazzoleni used both sophomore Will Crothers and freshman Dov Grumet-Morris in goal on the weekend. The duo performed well, as Grumet-Morris made 31 saves on Friday night while Crothers stopped 37 Clarkson shots on Saturday.

Harvard 2, St. Lawrence 1

While Kolarik is the team’s leading scorer with 11 points, he hadn’t scored a goal this season prior to Friday night.

As far as the Crimson was concerned, he picked a great time to score it.

With the game tied 1-1 and seemingly headed to overtime, Mazzoleni sent the Kolarik-Moore-Fried line out on the ice in hopes of winning the game in regulation.

They came through for him, with a little help from senior captain Peter Capouch.

With about 30 seconds to play in the game, Capouch gathered the puck just inside the Saint blue line and sent a shot toward SLU goaltender Mike McKenna. While it wasn’t on goal, it got the puck onto Fried’s stick to St. Lawrence goalie Mike McKenna’s right and below the goal line.

Fried then worked the puck to Moore directly behind the St. Lawrence goal. Moore, who had come extremely close to setting up several other goals during the game, hit Kolarik’s stick right on the tape in the high slot.

Kolarik hesitated for a split-second to ready the puck before promptly blasting it past McKenna for the game-winner.

“We had been working all week on chipping the puck down low and keeping it moving,” Kolarik said. “Rob chipped it in and Dom made a great pass.... I had the easy part.”

The magnitude of Kolarik’s goal can only be appreciated when considering that the Crimson had killed off a 5-on-3 penalty only moments before the tally sent the Crimson faithful among the 2,356 in attendance into a frenzy.

“When adversity hit with the penalties, we responded with a real big kill,” Mazzoleni said. “Then we got the big play from our big players.”

Harvard had the first goal on the evening.

With the game only a few minutes old, a Kenny Smith shot from the right point went wide to McKenna’s left before the puck took a hard carom off the boards and found its way to freshman defenseman Ryan Lannon waiting at the other end of the blue line. Lannon then sent a pass along the boards to Moore in the left corner.

Moore warded off an SLU defender before sending the puck out to the left faceoff circle. Fried was waiting there and sent a bullet high to McKenna’s glove side that dented the twine for a 1-0 Harvard lead at the 3:49 mark of the frame.

The assist credited to Lannon was his first collegiate point.

After a scoreless second period, the Saints tied things up at the 4:43 mark of the third period, as St. Lawrence defenseman Jimmy Ball made a pinpoint pass through the neutral zone and onto the waiting stick of SLU captain Robin Carruthers as he crossed the Crimson blue line.

Carruthers skated in on Grumet-Morris and deposited the puck five-hole to tie the game.

St. Lawrence Coach Joe Marsh was pleased with his team’s performance.

“That was just a great college game,” Marsh said following the game. “I’m proud of our effort. I really feel that’s the best game we’ve played all year.”

Harvard 2, Clarkson 2 (OT)

Just as it was Capouch’s play on the blue line that catalyzed the game-winner on Friday night, it was the captain’s stick that began the game-tying scoring play against the Golden Knights on Saturday.

With only seconds to play and Clarkson (4-6-3, 3-0-2 ECAC) clinging to a 2-1 lead, Capouch sent in a shot from the left point that Golden Knight goalie Mike Walsh stopped.

The rebound, however, remained loose in front of the Clarkson goal, and the extra attacker that Harvard had on the ice came into play during the ensuing scrum in front of Walsh.

Pettit jabbed and Kolarik poked, but it was eventually Moore’s stick that sent the puck past Walsh for Harvard’s second last-minute goal in as many nights.

While the scoreboard may have been equivalent on both sides, the postgame reaction in the two locker rooms was anything but.

“It’s an awful letdown,” Clarkson coach Mark Morris said of Moore’s late goal. “We keep beating ourselves this year. For most of that 60 minutes, we played very thoroughly.”

Naturally, Mazzoleni saw things in a different way.

“We wanted two points tonight, no question, but to come back and earn a point like this is really big,” he said. “It’s kissing your sister, but this is a point that will help us down the road.”

In keeping with the theme of the weekend, Mazzoleni was pleased with how hard his team played.

“It’s a positive sign the way our team continued to play,” he said. “We didn’t have a lot of jam in the first period, but as the game progressed we had the better scoring chances.”

A good number of those chances were near-misses, as the Crimson saw two goals disallowed and also hit the pipes twice.

But while Harvard had many chances during the game, it was Clarkson who drew first blood.

Well into the first period, standout freshman winger Jay Latulippe borrowed a page from SLU’s Ball and weaved a pass through the neutral zone and to sophomore center Jean Desroches, who beat Crothers for a 1-0 Clarkson lead at the 13:29 mark of the frame.

The goal seemed to energize the Knights, who took control of the game for the remainder of the period and into the second.

Fortunately for the Crimson, Kolarik was able to halt that momentum about halfway through the second frame.

Harvard defenseman Dave McCulloch worked the puck across the neutral zone to Rob Fried, who was able to chip it along the boards to Kolarik just outside the Clarkson blue line.

And that’s when the show began.

The sophomore winger carried it into the zone by himself and virtually skated a circle around one of two Clarkson defenders in the zone before deking Walsh and putting a backhander by him to tie the game at 8:16 of the frame, effectively dropping the jaw of the 2,634 assembled at Bright.

The tally was Kolarik’s second on both the weekend and the season.

The Knights responded later in the period, as David Evans pounded a rebound past Crothers at 15:35 of the frame.

“[Winning on the road] has been a real big challenge for us,” said Clarkson Coach Mark Morris after his team dropped to 0-5-2 away from Cheel Arena. “It’s been a long, hard year for us. To keep positive has been a challenge.”