Men's Hockey Survives Another Scare

CHESTNUT HILL, Mass.—Another game, another close escape.

After taking a 4-0 lead against No. 5 Boston College midway through the second period, the No. 19 Harvard men’s hockey team allowed the Eagles to storm back late in the game last night at Kelley Rink.

Allowing third-period goals appears to have become habit for the Crimson (4-2-0, 3-2-0 ECAC). Just last weekend, Cornell scored two late goals to shock Harvard with a come-from-behind victory. And the following night, Colgate trimmed the Crimson’s 6-1 cushion to a two-goal margin with three goals in a 2:50-minute span in the third period.

BC (4-3-1, 3-1-1 Hockey East) scored the second of its two third-periods goals at 15:42 to cut Harvard’s lead to 4-3. The Eagles then pulled goaltender Cory Schneider with 1:51 remaining and had several scoring opportunities, even hitting the crossbar in the last minute of play.

Only when Crimson senior forward Charlie Johnson tallied an empty-net goal with eight seconds remaining did Harvard finally heave a collective sigh of relief.

“We’d like to create a little more offense and go after [the Eagles] a little more in the third,” said Harvard coach Ted Donato ’91. “I thought we sat back—we got away from what made us successful.”

DIRTY BIRDS

The Eagles made numerous trips to the sin bin, tallying seven penalties for 14 minutes, including four in the second period.

Even when BC wasn’t inviting whistles, the Eagles were delivering heavy body checks against Harvard. Freshmen defenseman Brian McCafferty seemed to be BC’s favorite target, absorbing two big hits that had him bent over on the bench for several minutes.

“The one play [McCafferty] got banged up on, I thought he never touched the puck,” Donato said. “I didn’t think it was a clean hit.”

But the Crimson delivered a couple of solid checks itself.

In the second period, with the Eagles on the power play, Harvard got caught on a line change, giving BC a 2-on-0. But senior defenseman Tom Walsh sped down the ice and threw his body at the Eagles’ forward, preventing BC from getting a shot on net.

Blueliner Dave MacDonald foiled a scoring chance with a big hit as well. After losing his stick while back-checking, the defenseman simply leveled his opponent.

Nevertheless, there was little doubt that the Eagles were doing most of the body-checking.

“There were a lot of big hits out there,” Donato said. “Unfortunately, we were on the [receiving] end of most of them.”

PINPOINT ACCURACY

Despite being outshot by BC 39-18, the Crimson had a much better scoring percentage, converting four of those 18 shots into goals.

In the second period, Harvard only fired three shots on target but notched two tallies. Sophomore forward Jon Pelle netted his goal on the power play at 5:35, taking a cross-ice feed from junior pivot Kevin Du and firing it high over the left shoulder of Schneider.

Senior winger Dan Murphy extended the Crimson’s lead to 4-0 with Harvard’s only even-strength tally of the night, stuffing a shot past Schneider at the left post.

“We took what was there—we didn’t try to force it too much,” Donato said. “We moved [the puck] around, we were patient with it, [and] we had some guys make some real nice plays.”

FINAL TICKS

Sophomore forward Paul Dufault now has seven points in six games after only having one point in fives games last season…Crimson netminder John Daigneau had a career-high 36 saves, stopping almost three times as many shots as Schneider (13)…Harvard went 3-for-5 on the power play, improving its man-advantage conversion rate to 33 percent…Johnson has five points in six career games against the Eagles…Harvard hadn’t won at BC since Jan. 9, 1979, when the Crimson won 5-4 in overtime.

—Staff writer Karan Lodha can be reached at klodha@fas.harvard.edu.