Lloyd, Malone Lift Men's Hockey to Win Over RPI in Playoff Opener

For the Harvard men’s hockey team, a return to Lake Placid now lies just 60 minutes away.

Sophomore Seb Lloyd and junior Sean Malone each logged two goals apiece in the Crimson’s postseason debut on Friday, lifting No. 12/12 Harvard to a 5-2 win over Rensselaer in Game 1 of the ECAC tournament quarterfinals at the Bright-Landry Hockey Center.

Entering the weekend a notch above the NCAA tournament bubble, the Crimson (17-9-4, 12-6-4 ECAC) took hold of the driver’s seat in the series with a three-goal second period bookended by strikes from its newfound scoring threat.

With Harvard already up 1-0, Lloyd set his big night into gear less than three minutes into the middle frame. Dancing around defenseman Mike Prapavessis to get his linemate the puck, freshman Ryan Donato fed Lloyd in the slot, and the sophomore beat Engineer goaltender Jason Kasdorf to the short side at 2:56.

Then with 4:22 to go in the period and the Crimson leading 3-0, the underclassman duo connected a second time, as Lloyd redirected a Donato blast from the point past Kasdorf, prompting RPI coach Seth Appert to pull his star netminder.

“He’s definitely one of the best goalies in college hockey,” said Lloyd of Kasdorf, who prior to Friday had stopped 92 of Harvard’s last 93 shots against him. “We had a game plan just to get traffic in front of him and pepper him with shots. It’s kind of nice to chase a goalie of that caliber. It gives us a little confidence going into the next game, and maybe [it] got in his head a little bit.”

With his first career multi-goal game, Lloyd now has scored four times in his last five contests—an impressive flip of the script for a sophomore who previously had just five goals in 52 appearances.

“Seb’s a guy who arrived here with a pretty good offensive resume,” Harvard coach Ted Donato ’91 said. “[The offense] maybe didn’t come as quickly as we all would have liked, but really in this second half of the season—I think ever since the Christmas tournament—he’s been able to find the back of the net and get himself to the dirty areas of the ice.”

Harvard co-captains Kyle Criscuolo (11) and Jimmy Vesey were held off the score sheet on Friday. By Y. Kit Wu

Lloyd’s second goal snapped an 0-for-11 Crimson power-play drought against the Engineers (18-14-7, 8-7-7), one of only two ECAC teams who had a perfect kill percentage this season against the nation’s top special teams unit. RPI survived two minutes shorthanded just prior to the goal, but junior Jake Wood left his side down an Engineer for five after kneeing co-captain Kyle Criscuolo in the neutral zone; and with extra time to work with, Harvard took advantage.

Nonetheless, so did RPI. Senior center Milos Bubela was quick to negate the Lloyd tip, picking off an attempted pass from Criscuolo to Donato by the Engineer blue line on the tail end of the Wood penalty and beating sophomore goaltender Merrick Madsen five-hole on the breakaway that followed.

RPI tacked on another with less than five minutes gone in the third, as senior defenseman Phil Hampton put home a loose puck down low to pull the Engineers within two.

But that was as much of a comeback as RPI could engineer. Just prior to the 10-minute mark in the third, Malone added his second goal of the night, moving right-to-left on second-string goalie Cam Hackett and sliding a shot past his right pad to put the Crimson back in control.

The fourth meeting of the year between Harvard and RPI was certainly the most physical—something both Harvard forward Seb Lloyd and RPI coach Seth Appert attributed after to the game to playoff hockey. By Y. Kit Wu

Malone’s first goal of the night, which came at 17:02 in the first period, fell seven seconds shy of bringing Harvard’s power-play woes against RPI to an end a little sooner. Just after the Engineers completed the game's first kill, Malone utilized a Luke Esposito pick at the blue line to enter the slot, then rocketed a glove-side wrister past Kasdorf to put the Crimson on the scoreboard.

Esposito assisted on both Malone goals, as well as a Colin Blackwell tally in the second period, giving the junior left-winger a career-high three helpers on the night. But his first assist proved to be the most important, as Harvard had gone most of the first frame without many scoring chances.

In fact, despite being outshot, 43-27, for the game, RPI threw more shots on net than the Crimson in the opening frame.

“I thought we outplayed them in the first period and didn’t get rewarded for it,” Appert said. “I thought we were better than them...yet they made a play to get up 1-0 [and] escape that period, and then their urgency level was real high in the first seven, eight minutes of the second period.”

As Appert alluded to, after logging just 10 shots on goal in the first frame, the Crimson opened the floodgates in the second. In less than four minutes of second-period action, Harvard had already logged nine shots, among which was Lloyd’s first score. By period’s end, the Crimson had outshot the Engineers, 22-6, over the frame.

Harvard will now look to close out the best-of-three series Saturday night, as a win would both secure the Crimson’s spot in the ECAC semifinals in Lake Placid and improve its case for an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament.

Meanwhile, despite being pushed to the brink of elimination, Appert says his side will not resort to playing desperate hockey in Game 2.

“You don’t want to be desperate; desperate’s dumb usually,” Appert said. “You want real, real playoff urgency, but usually desperate hockey is dumb hockey. And you can’t play dumb. You’ve got to play with a dramatic amount of urgency and fight.”

“We’ve had our backs against the wall since day one this year,” he continued. “We’ve faced this before, and I’m not worried at all about it.”

—Staff writer Jake Meagher can be reached at jake.meagher@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @MeagherTHC.