M. Hockey Rolls Over Dutchmen

SCHENECTADY, N.Y.—It takes a good goaltender to laugh about a late penalty shot goal that ruined your shutout.

“I’ve had a dozen or two penalty shots, and believe it or not, this is the first one I let in—no, I’m just kidding,” laughed Harvard sophomore Dov Grumet-Morris. “But if they only score once in a game, hey, I’ll take that.”

The No. 13 Crimson (11-5-1, 10-2-0 ECAC) extended its conference winning streak to six games with a 3-1 win over Union (7-10-3, 3-4-1) on Saturday night.

“One of the critiques that people continue to say about our team is that goaltending is our weakest link, but last year a major reason why we had such a transition during the playoffs was Grumet-Morris,” said Harvard coach Mark Mazzoleni. “He is steady and he gives us a chance to win every night. That’s all you can ask, and he was the difference in this game.”

Union carried play in the early going, putting 13 shots on goal in the first period. But Grumet-Morris, who has always played his best when seeing a healthy amount of shots, was equal to the task, yielding few rebounds.

“He made some big saves early on to keep us in the game,” Mazzoleni said.

The most spectacular of Grumet-Morris’s 29 saves came with Harvard leading 1-0 in the second period, when he fell backward while making a sweeping glove save to halt sophomore center Joel Beal on a 2-on-1.

“I one-timed the shot, and then all of a sudden his glove came out of nowhere,” Beal said. “It was just a great save.”

Grumet-Morris continued his flawless play the rest of the way—except, of course, on the penalty shot by junior center Glenn Sanders with 4:35 remaining in the game.

With the crowd of 1,582 at Achilles Rink on its feet, Sanders addressed the puck, and Grumet-Morris sprinted out to the hash marks to challenge him.

Sanders brought the puck in along the left side, deked right, then deked back to his forehand before lifting a shot that clipped Grumet-Morris, caromed off the post and sailed into the net, cutting Harvard’s lead to 3-1.

“I think I got a piece of it, but that was a good play for him,” Grumet-Morris said. “He got his shot away.”

Sanders, though, was the only person to get the best of Grumet-Morris on the night, even though Union coach Kevin Sneddon ’92 pulled goaltender Kris Mayotte to give the Dutchmen a 6-on-4 advantage for the last 1:32.

“They’ve got a good goalie, that’s for sure,” said Sneddon, who fell to 1-8-1 against his alma mater. “He’s one of the best in the league.”

With few worries in the defensive zone thanks to the strong play of Grumet-Morris, Harvard’s forwards—minus injured regulars Brendan Bernakevitch and Dennis Packard—scored three opportunistic, timely goals.

The first came after the Dutchmen had nearly taken the lead early in the second period, thanks to four minutes of power play time in a 4:11 span. But the moment Crimson defender Noah Welch stepped out of the box after a roughing minor, sophomore forward Tom Cavanagh one-timed a gorgeous pass from freshman defenseman Tom Walsh past Mayotte to give Harvard a 1-0 lead.

The Crimson’s next tally was the game-winner, both literally and in spirit. Just as it appeared the Dutchmen would go into the second intermission trailing by only one, a great individual effort by Harvard senior Brett Nowak just before the horn gave Grumet-Morris all the goal support he would need.

Uncontested by the Dutchmen, who looked winded at the end of an up-and-down period, Nowak looped around a pair of defenders and walked into the high slot, snapping his eighth goal of the season past Mayotte with just four-tenths of a second left on the clock.

“We talk about not giving up goals in the first two minutes of a period, or the last two minutes of a period, because that’s really demoralizing,” said

Sneddon, whose team has now lost four straight. “We looked down in the dumps after that early in the third.”

Harvard took advantage. On the power play, captain Dominic Moore one-timed a pass from junior forward Tim Pettit that hit the inside of Mayotte’s leg pad before fluttering to the back of the net, giving the Crimson a 3-0 lead at 7:31 of the final period.

With Grumet-Morris on top of his game, that was more than enough.

“We just ran into a hot goaltender tonight,” Beal said.

—Staff writer Jon Paul Morosi can be reached at morosi@fas.harvard.edu.