Icemen Split Weekend Pair, Fall to Colgate, Defeat RPI

Both the old and the new Harvard hockey teams appeared at the Bright Center this weekend. The old Crimson fell to Colgate, 5-3, in its home opener Friday, staging one of the too-little-too-late third period rallies familiar to last year's fans. What the Harvard faithful hopes is the new Crimson showed its stuff on Saturday, never trailing in a 5-2 victory over the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

A crowd of 1750 was on hand Friday night, and the Beanpot championship flag was back in place with a new date (1981) added. But the icemen apparently could have used further inspiration, as they were flat from the start against a strong Colgate squad.

The first few minutes told the story of the whole game. Harvard failed to cash in on its initial opportunity--a power play at 3:11 of the opening period. But the Red Raiders took advantage of their chance, a power play following a slashing call against Neil Sheehy. At 6:49, almost a minute into the man-advantage situation, centerman Jim Wallace's slapshot from near the left point beat Crimson goalie Wade Lau for an early Colgate lead.

As Guy Lemonde grew sharper in the Colgate net, the Red Raider defense foiled repeated scoring chances for the Crimson's first line of Greg Olson, team captain Michael Watson and Greg Britz.

Colgate took command of the game with two goals around the six-minute mark of the second period. Coming out of the penalty box Red Raider center Steve Smith picked up the puck at center ice. Skating info the Crimson zone two-on-one, Smith passed to left wing Dan Fridgen, who hit the twins at 5:31.

Smith came back to score his own goal just 82 seconds later after Ken Iselmoe retrieved a rebound of his own shot and set up Smith for a tap in from the slot.

Late in the period, on another two-on-one. Wallace scored his second of the night, at 19:05, to put the Riders up. 4-0.

Greg Chalmers finally got the Crimson on the board with a tip-in of a Brad Kwong slapshot at 2:30 of the third stanza. Only 81 seconds later Harvard's Jay North grabbed a loose puck near the red line and dished it off to Scott Powers, who beat Lemonde to his left side, cutting the Raider lead to two.

A tripping call at 5:24 on Greg Olson stymied the rally, however, and with 12 seconds left on the man-advantage Red Raider Mike Houle notched an insurance goal. Too late to catch up, Martin's backhander at 16:28 closed out the scoring.

"We didn't play good hockey the first two periods," said Harvard coach Bill Cleary, and winger Britz added, "The first two periods [Lemonde] just stoned us--that made the difference."

On Saturday, the Crimson again faced a hot goalie, with a different result.

Skating poorly and falling down after every Crimson check in the first period, RPI--which spent much of the night with players in the penalty box--gave up the first of four power play goals at 7:29. Britz tucked a loose puck in the crease past goalie Scott Saari, for a 1-0 Harvard lead.

But Saari stopped the other 21 Crimson shots in the period--he faced 52 shots on the night--and at 2:53 of the second period an increasingly aggressive RPI squad tied the score on Dave Stoyanovich's shot from the high slot.

Two more power play goals put Harvard back in fromt. At 8:01 the Crimson gained their third two-man advantage of the night, and at 9:39 a hard, low Mark Fusco slapshot put Harvard ahead. And Britz notched his second power-play goal at 15:08, converting Fusco's centering pass near the RPI net.

Harvard pulled away from the Engineers in the third period on a Michael Watson power-play tally (he assisted on each of the three earlier goals). Watson poked in Olson's pass from behind the net at 13:54. As the eloquent chants coming from Sections 12 and 13 clearly started to rattle Saari, Sheehy added two to the lead with a slapshot that hit Saari's glove and bounced into the net. An RPI goal at 17:28 closed out the scoring.