JONNIE ON THE SPOT: Crimson Couldn't Have Come Closer

ALBANY, N.Y.—Even with all its history—10 Beanpots, one national championship and the likes of Billy Cleary ’56, the Fusco brothers and Lane MacDonald ’89—never since the birth of Harvard hockey on Boston’s Franklin Field in 1898 had the Crimson won back-to-back ECAC titles.

Harvard didn’t even return to the championship game in the year following each of its first five titles. The Crimson’s sixth came last season, though, and No. 7 was just inches away on Saturday night before it turned into overtime heartbreak

“I did believe we had the game won,” said junior Tyler Kolarik, who would have had the ECAC title-clinching goal for the second consecutive season had Cornell not rallied with two late goals to win 3-2. “But you have to play all 60 minutes.”

One year and six days after Harvard upset the Big Red in their double-overtime epic at Lake Placid’s historic 1980 Olympic Rink, the Crimson appeared headed for another upset of No. 2 Cornell, leading 2-1 with under a minute to play.

David LeNeveu, the Big Red goaltender whose favorite pastime is finding new records to break each weekend, was sitting on the bench for an extra attacker while his teammates scrambled in the Harvard zone, trying to summon a year’s worth of angst to help them score one more goal.

But the Crimson’s Brett Nowak gained possession of the puck to the right of goaltender Dov Grumet-Morris and flipped it toward the empty Cornell cage. During its slow-motion journey, it teetered and tottered on the choppy Pepsi Arena ice, looking true at first but sailing inches wide. Icing was called, bringing a faceoff to the right of Grumet-Morris.

If Harvard would’ve won the draw, it would’ve won the game.

Neither happened.

“We were confident,” Big Red captain Stephen Bâby said. “We worked on 6-on-5 all year in practice.”

That was a good thing for Cornell, because it sure didn’t get much work on it during games. The Big Red lost four games all season, pulling its goalie at the end of three of them: in a Nov. 16 loss at Dartmouth, then twice in December while LeNeveu was off playing for Canada in the World Junior Championships. The concept of losing was foreign to this team.

The Crimson, though, was on the verge of imposing it upon its rival once again. But Cornell center Ryan Vesce controlled the critical draw—one of his 21 faceoff wins in the game—and pushed it back to defenseman Mark McRae at the point.

The Big Red, with five members of its celebrated senior class on the ice, initiated what amounted to a rugby scrum in the faceoff circle, leaving McRae open at the point and Harvard captain Dominic Moore with a decision to make.

Moore had to choose between a bad situation and a worse one: leave McRae open at the point and get in the way of a pass to 6’3, 230-pound defenseman Doug Murray and his hellish slap shot, or take McRae and hope that someone else was free to step up on Murray.

Moore chose the former. McRae chose low to the stick side and went for it. With 32.3 seconds left in regulation, the game was tied.

“I definitely had a chance on that,” lamented Grumet-Morris after the game. “It went off the post and in.”

Less than 90 seconds into overtime, it was over.

Said Harvard coach Mark Mazzoleni: “This is a tough loss to take.”

It was especially so because of the Crimson heroics it spoiled. Had the Harvard lead held up, everyone would be talking about the grit of Kolarik, who won the title game in double overtime last season while playing with a broken thumb and was a last-minute addition to the lineup on Saturday after missing all or part of the last five games with two different injuries.

Kolarik was hockey's equivalent of Kirk Gibson, getting one last good swing out of an ailing body to give Harvard its first lead with 3:46 left in the game.

But even before Kolarik there was Dominic Moore, arguably the best player on the ice on Saturday—or in any ECAC game this season, with all due respect to ECAC Co-Players of the Year LeNeveu and Chris Higgins of Yale.

Moore worked tirelessly throughout, finding both time and space when there was little of either to be had against the stifling Cornell defense. At last, Moore was rewarded at 8:04 of the third period, when he picked Mark McRae's pocket clean, spun in the slot and beat LeNeveu to tie the game 1-1.

Saturday, though, was not the night for this Harvard hockey team to pen a new chapter in its hallowed history book. There would be no back-to-back championships, no players tripping over one another in a spontaneous embrace after the game winner and no assistant coaches sliding onto the ice, off-balance, to greet their victorious team.

This time it was some other scraggly-faced team, wearing a different shade of carmine, that had reason to celebrate.

What now?

The Crimson, now 0-for-3 in trophy attempts this year—including the Beanpot and ECAC regular season championship—will begin a quest for greater hardware in the NCAA Regionals on Friday afternoon against No. 7 Boston University. And unlike last season, when Harvard came in as the surprise ECAC champion with a touch of just-happy-to-be-here about it, it has something to prove.

That’s because it’s gone 0-6-1 this season against tournament teams, and made its way into the NCAAs thanks to a combination of an expanded 16-team tournament, strong play against ECAC teams and an almost-perfect scenario coming out of the CCHA, Hockey East and WCHA tournaments that knocked other contending teams out of consideration for at-large bids.

Things have fallen into place quite nicely for the Crimson, and it’s very safe to say that if Harvard loses to BU on Friday—as it has done twice already this season—it will be a disappointment. The Crimson needs a big win to validate its season. The coaches know it, and the players know it. They nearly got it on Saturday. Their next big chance is this weekend.

That's not to say, of course, that BU is ripe to be beaten. The Terriers are a great tournament team. They won each of the three in-season tournaments in which they played this season (the Ice Breaker, Great Lakes Invitational and Beanpot) and are battle-tested after playing three overtime periods in the Hockey East Final Four. Their coach, Jack Parker, is experienced and will have his team ready to play. And Sean Fields has proven himself to be a great big-game goaltender this season.

Harvard, as a No. 3 seed, would probably match up better with any of the other No. 2 seeds (Boston College, Ferris State or Maine) than with BU, whose strength—much like Cornell’s—is along the boards. It won’t be easy.

At the same time, the Crimson can’t argue with the opportunity it has. The Terriers are a huge intracity rival, the stakes are high and the game is being contested close to the two campuses, so the crowd is sure to be strong. Sounds like Beanpot redux.

So to get to the Frozen Four—which Moore said has been the team's goal all season long—Harvard first has to take care of the big-name school from five miles down the road. How fitting.

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