Tough Ending for Streaky Harvard

The 2008 Harvard men’s hockey team’s season was a rollercoaster. A flying start to the year that included wins over ranked teams such as St. Lawrence and Rensselaer devolved into a 10-game winless streak through the months of December and January. The Crimson came out of that spell in Cinderella-like fashion, embarking on a winning streak through February and March that took the team all the way to the ECAC finals, where it fell to Princeton.

“We definitely had our ups and downs,” junior forward Jimmy Fraser said. “We started off really well, [but] come the end of December and then exam time, we kind of hit a wall. We were able to pull it together by the end [of the season], but unfortunately we just couldn’t pull through in the finals.”

Harvard began its season in commanding fashion, notching big wins over its ECAC rivals, including a 6-1 drubbing of St. Lawrence in which sophomore goaltender Kyle Richter recorded a career-high 42 saves to anchor the Crimson defense.

The first turning point in Harvard’s season came on Dec. 12 against crosstown rival Boston College. Although the Crimson held a 36-27 advantage in shots on goal, the team simply failed to find the back of the net in a 7-2 blowout loss to the Eagles.

“That could have been one of the worst beatings we’ve taken since I’ve been here,” co-captain David MacDonald said after the game. “They outplayed us in pretty much every aspect of the game.”

The loss came near the beginning of Harvard’s descent into a long, winless winter.

The team did not see a win for almost two full months. The Crimson lost to teams that it had handily defeated earlier in the season such as Rensselaer and St. Lawrence.

“As soon as December and exam time hit, we just sort of fell off our game,” Fraser said. “We played BC at home and got a spanking and just never recovered. A lot of guys on the team have speculated [about the losing streak], and I definitely think Harvard’s scheduling had a lot to do with it.”

To begin the second semester, Harvard snapped its losing streak with a decisive 3-1 win at Dartmouth.

“Tonight we played probably our closest effort to a 60 minute game we’ve played all season,” co-captain Mike Taylor said after the game. “I thought we really played all three periods well for the first time in a while.”

The pivotal win over the Big Green was only a stepping stone to what Harvard would achieve over the course of the rest of its season.

The Crimson cruised to a 3-1 win over Northeastern in the first round of the Beanpot to secure itself a place in the finals against BC. Instead of falling flat as it did against the Eagles earlier in the season, Harvard went toe-to-toe with the eventual NCAA champions, rallying from two goals down with nine minutes to go in the final period to force overtime. Taylor scored two of the team’s five goals in the thriller, including the game-tying goal at 15:36 in the third period. Though BC managed to capture the Beanpot Championship with an overtime goal, Harvard’s performance against the Eagles was proof that the Crimson was capable of going head to head with the best teams in the country.

“A lot of the guys get really amped up about playing in the Beanpot, so we have a history of playing well in that,” Fraser said. “I think that we had just started showing up at practice with the attitude that we were going to start playing to a higher standard of hockey.”

Harvard achieved a higher standard of hockey through the rest of the season, notching big wins over its ECAC opponents. The Crimson posted a 6-1 win over Ivy League foe Yale and recorded its biggest win in 15 years with a 11-0 annihilation of visiting Quinnipiac in the opening game of the ECAC playoffs.

Unfortunately, Harvard would see its dream-like turnaround come to a screeching halt in the finals of the ECAC tournament as the Crimson’s hopes of an NCAA automatic bid slipped away with a crushing 4-1 loss to Princeton in the championship game.

For the second straight year, Harvard was forced to sit out of the NCAA tournament.

“In my three years at Harvard, I think playing a lot of games has a lot to do with our late season turnaround,” Fraser said. “Unfortunately, we just couldn’t go far enough this time to win it.”

—Staff writer Lucy D. Chen can be reached at lucychen@fas.harvard.edu.