Harvard Stumbles Against Conference Heavyweights

After exams ended, the Harvard men’s hockey team faced its biggest test of the season when it embarked upon a three-game road trip against the top three teams in the ECAC. Having lost to St. Lawrence and Clarkson University on back-to-back nights last weekend, the Crimson (7-12-1, 5-9-1 ECAC) skated to a 2-2 tie last night against No. 18 Quinnipiac (12-8-5, 8-3-4) in Hamden, Conn.

“We’re frustrated, but when you look at the league, we did just play the one, two, and three teams,” captain Dylan Reese said. “In my mind, we outplayed two of the teams evenly and were semi-even with the other team.”

Harvard will return to the ice against Union this Friday night at the Bright Hockey Center.

HARVARD 2, QUINNIPIAC 2

A hard-fought tie sounds oxymoronic, but the Crimson will take it given that Harvard rallied from a 2-0 deficit against the Bobcats.

The Crimson surrendered a power-play goal in the first period, and the Bobcats added a second freak goal when a crossing pass deflected off of the skate of a Quinnipiac player, beating freshman goalie Kyle Richter.

Harvard equalized the score with less than five minutes left in the third period to force overtime when senior Kevin Du followed his own shot to the net and stuffed in the rebound for his third goal of the season.

Even though an unlucky bounce cost the Crimson one goal, the team can thank good fortune for the first goal that started the rally.

With less than a minute left in the second period, Harvard had finished killing a penalty when junior defenseman J.D. McCabe made a cross ice pass to Dave Watters, who had just been released from the penalty box.

With the Bobcats defense still in the Crimson zone, Watters scored on a breakaway after beating Bobcats goalie Bud Fisher five-hole.

In a low-scoring game, the Crimson unleashed 41 shots—even more impressive considering that only five of them came on power-play chances.

“We outshot them more than 2 to 1, which is something we have worked on as a team,” Reese said. “That’s the type of mentality to score goals and win games.”

CLARKSON 4, HARVARD 2

In Potsdam, N.Y., the Crimson could not hold onto its second-intermission lead as the No. 10 Clarkson Golden Knights (16-6-4, 8-3-3) scored two unanswered goals in the third period and tacked on an empty-netter.

Despite Harvard’s four first-period penalties, the score remained tied at 1-1 thanks to junior forward Jon Pelle’s goal. The Crimson controlled the game’s second period and capitalized on the last of three power-play opportunities to take a 2-1 lead when senior forward Ryan Maki netted his team-leading ninth goal of the season.

In the third period, Clarkson’s Mike Sullivan evened the score after an apparent save by freshman goalie Kyle Richter trickled past the goal line during several seconds of commotion in Harvard’s crease.

The play was not without controversy. The Crimson believed that Richter may have covered the puck during the fracas and that the play should have been whistled dead earlier.

About ten minutes later, Clarkson broke the deadlock when Matt Beca netted the go-ahead goal with 1:24 left.

The Crimson pulled Richter in the closing minute to no avail, as Clarkson’s Shea Guthrie added an empty-netter to make the final score 4-2.

SAINT LAWRENCE 4, HARVARD 3

Through 57 minutes of Friday night’s game against the No. 17 St. Lawrence Saints (14-10-2, 10-3-1), Harvard had successfully killed 4-of-4 penalties against the ECAC division leaders. The Crimson lost 4-3 when the team proved unable to kill a fifth penalty incurred in the game’s final minutes by senior forward Steve Mandes.

After senior forward Ryan Maki and junior forward Alex Meintel each scored in the third period to erase a two-goal deficit, the 3-3 score persisted into the final minutes. The Saints went on the power play with 2:25 to play when Mandes was sent to the box for holding the stick.

St. Lawrence, which boasts one of the best power-play squads in the nation, took only 89 seconds to capitalize, as forward Mike McKenzie beat Richter for the game-winner with 56 seconds left in regulation.

Despite failing to gain a victory, Reese still noted that Harvard’s struggles on the road can be a learning experience.

“We learned what we need to do to win,” Reese said. “It’s a matter of capitalizing on our chances. We had a lot of power plays where we were moving the puck around and getting opportunities. We just need to finish better.”

—Staff writer Robert T. Hamlin can be reached at rhamlin@fas.harvard.edu.