M. Hockey Grinds Out Win Over Minutemen

After a heartbreaking 3-2 loss to crosstown rival No. 2 Boston College dropped his team to .500, Harvard men’s hockey coach Mark Mazzoleni had had enough. In front of the entire team, he called out the skaters not carrying their weight and challenged them to live up to the potential that had earned the squad its high preseason poll rankings.

Turns out his players got the message.

“I thought we outworked them,” Mazzoleni said. “There wasn’t one guy out there that didn’t play hard and we haven’t had that the whole damned year.”

Despite surrendering three consecutive goals and allowing No. 8 UMass to climb out of the deep hole that the Crimson [6-5-1] had dug for it with dominant play during the first period, Harvard regained its focus and staved off a second collapse in less than a week with a 5-3 victory.

“We came out with a lot of focus tonight,” Mazzoleni said. “I have not challenged a team and individuals like I’ve done the last two days with these kids.”

With Harvard reeling after watching its three-goal lead evaporate in just under 20 minutes and having freshman right winger Ryan Maki sent to the penalty box at 11:15 in the third period, the momentum so firmly controlled by the Crimson after the opening frame appeared to have shifted into the Minutemen’s corner. Despite six power plays after the start of the second period, Harvard had failed to extend its lead and appeared ready to be overtaken.

But that was before freshman winger Steve Mandes brought the jam.

Assistant captain and forward Tyler Kolarik intercepted an errant UMass pass at the blue line as the Minutemen [9-4-3] prepared to establish their power-play offensive set and quickly advanced the puck along the right-hand wall to Mandes before racing down the center of the ice in pursuit. As the pair descended on goal, the one defender left standing in their way chose to seal off Kolarik, leaving Mandes to close the deal.

Mandes—who had been added to the third line to increase Harvard’s lagging offensive production—snapped the puck high and to goaltender Tim Warner’s left. Warner reached behind his body and gloved the shot, but despite his best efforts, could not maintain his grip.

The puck squirted loose and fell directly into the goal, handing the Crimson the lead and Mandes his first collegiate goal.

“It just trickled in,” Mandes said. “I didn’t know if it was going in.”

The swing of the pendulum was halted and the Minutemen fell into their previous state of disarray. Desperate to reknot the score, UMass struggled to string together an effective attack, while Harvard returned to its aggressive play in the offensive zone, swarming the goal mouth and forcing several solid saves from Warner to keep his team close.

Once Warner was pulled, however, junior center Tom Cavanagh capped the scoring with an empty-net tally with two seconds remaining to seal the victory.

But it was the three hard-fought goals in the first 22 minutes that provided the Crimson with the safety net that eventually saved Harvard from collapse.

Peppering the UMass net with shots—36 in all on the night—the Crimson gave itself plenty of chances to score and it paid off early.

“How can you win hockey games when you don’t shoot?” Mazzoleni said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen points added to the scoreboard for not shooting the puck.”

Capitalizing on his scrappy play at both ends, sophomore Charlie Johnson propelled Harvard to its early lead with two quick tallies.

With junior Brendan Bernakevitch applying pressure to Minuteman goalie Gabe Winer as he skated to the right circle to clear a puck sent long down the ice, Johnson slid into position at the blue line to cut off any outlet.

When Winer’s pass feebly floated across the ice, Johnson gobbled it up and rifled it past him into the top right corner to take the lead.

“I tried to shoot as quick as I could because I knew they were going to hit me,” Johnson said. “I managed to find the corner.”

Just 14 minutes later, Johnson was again wreaking havoc for Winer, tipping home captain Kenny Smith’s shot from the point as a power play expired and prompting UMass coach Don Cahoon to pull his goaltender.

“You know, Charlie Johnson’s got to play with jam,” Mazzoleni said. “When Charlie Johnson plays with jam, that’s what happens. When he doesn’t play, you don’t even know he’s on the rink. I’m just telling you how it is. It’s the truth. He can be the difference-maker for us, if he plays with jam.”

But the hot pursuit of the puck and aggressive play dried up shortly after, as the Crimson managed just seven shots in the second period after unleashing 18 in the first.

Instead, similarly scrappy play from the Minutemen reversed the course of the game and nearly thwarted the victory.

Chipping at junior netminder Dov Grumet-Morris with 12 shots in the second period and crashing the front of the net, UMass looked strikingly similar to the Crimson of the period before.

The Minutemen’s effort was capped at 5:39 in the third by a tip-in on the doorstep by Stephen Werner, assisted by Jeff Lang and Greg Maudlin.

But solid goaltending from Grumet-Morris kept the game from spiralling out of control, recording 20 saves—including 17 in the final two periods.

Sent sprawling to keep the puck from the back of the net and on one occasion fending off as many as six shots in rapid succession, Grumet-Morris did what he has so often as of late—single-handedly held Harvard in games the skaters in front of him might otherwise not have been able to pull out on their own.

“He’s given us the type of goaltending we need to win, and we haven’t done our part scoring goals on that end,” Mazzoleni said. “If we hadn’t had Dov since [beating] Yale [Nov. 15], I’d hate to see what our record would be.”

—Staff writer Timothy J. McGinn can be reached at mcginn@fas.harvard.edu.