High Speed and High Quality

DURHAM, N.H.--They came out roaring. Flying. Two teams chomping on and biting through the bit. The Harvard and New Hampshire hockey teams, skating their skates off and turning in 20 minutes of hockey as fine as you'll ever see in the ECAC.

"The first period was the fastest and hardest I've ever seen," said Crimson defenseman Mark Fusco. "I'm kind of glad it didn't stay that way," he added after a deep breath, a breath that nobody--not the fans, not the coaches, not the players--had a chance to catch last night at Snively Arena during the opening stanza. Before you had time to count the Dartmouth jackets in the crowd. Harvard was in the locker room with a 3-1 lead, and the price of hot dogs at the concession stand had already dropped ten cents.

Actually, it was the Wildcats' pilot light that turned to flame first, after Fusco went off for an interference penalty at 6:24. The UNH power play clicked almost immediately, as center Paul Barton tipped a Craig Steensen slapshot from the blueline past a helpless Wade Lau just 13 seconds into the penalty.

But Harvard bounced right back at 7:05, when Scott Fusco took a centering pass from winger Greg Chalmers and flipped it past UNH netminder Todd Pearson to knot the score at one.

And, just a little more than a minute later, Harvard captain Mike Watson picked off an errant Wildcat pass just outside the blueline and wheeled in on Pearson's right side. But as the UNH goalie moved to guard the right post, Watson snapped a quick wrist shot high into the opposite side of the net for a 2-1 Harvard advantage.

The teams played even, fast-paced hockey for the next ten minutes, until Wildcat Ralph Robinson went off for slashing at 16:35. Near the 18-minute mark, Mark Fusco took a pass from Alan Litchfield at center ice and, uncharacteristically, popped into the UNH zone, slipped between two defenders and beat Pearson low to his right. The power play goal (Harvard is now 13 for 41 with a man-advantage) put Harvard well on its way to its fifth consecutive win over UNH.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the second period. Harvard came out pressing a little bit, not skating like it had been.

"In the first period, we just skated well," Bill Cleary said afterward. "But we didn't skate in the second and that's when Wade played great." In fact, although Lau certainly took the lead, coming up with five or six brilliant saves, the whole Harvard defense took over and made up for the slack-off in the skating department.

With pressure on us, it's definitely the best defense we've played all year," Cleary said.

Lau finished with 33 saves for the night, most of them down low ("I don't know if it was just a fluke of the game, but they did like to keep the puck down"--Lau), dropping his goals against to 2.71. "I don't think you can say anymore about the defense than that Wade was awesome," said blueline Litchfield.

In addition, Litchfield, Neil Sheehy, Scoot Sangster and, especially, Mark Fusco and Ken Code, turned in an outstanding defensive game against the super-speedy and super-sized UNH forwards. "I think it was the best overall defensive playing I've ever been a part of," said Fusco.

The Crimson defensemen continually knocked the puck away from Wildcats breaking into the zone, and if, on a rare occasion, they let somebody slip by for a shot, Lau was playing backboard in the net. That's nothing new for him against UNH, though, as he's now 4-0 against the Wildcats, including a 4-1 win in Durham two years ago.

"I can't figure it out," the Crimson netminder said with a smile, when asked about his taming of the Wildcats. "I just hope we meet them in the ECAC finals."