Jonnie on the Spot: Cornell Has Not Seen the Last of Men's Hockey

Forget about Cancun, Panama City or Mom’s home-cooked dinners.

Cancel all plane reservations.

Your spring break plans have changed. Because, as good as sunshine sounds right now, you’ll get the most for your money at the ECAC men’s hockey championships in balmy Albany, N.Y.

And if you were among the sellout crowd of 2,776 during Cornell’s 4-3 win over Harvard at Bright Hockey Center on Saturday night, you know why.

“That was a great hockey game between two great hockey teams,” said Cornell coach Mike Schafer.

Such a great game, in fact, that players and coaches on both sides seemed convinced afterward that they would meet a third time this season on Mar. 22 with the league title on the line in Albany.

“We’ll see Cornell again,” said Harvard coach Mark Mazzoleni. “No question about it.”

“I know we’ll see them again,” said Cornell senior Sam Paolini, who had a goal and an assist. “One more time. We’re going to meet each other one more time. And that’s the one that’s going to count.”

But that’s not to say Saturday night’s game wasn’t important. The win put the Big Red three points up on the Crimson in the ECAC standings with four games remaining.

In other words, the Cleary Cup will belong to Cornell for the second straight season.

“We knew what was on the line,” Schafer said.

So did Harvard. But the game, which had been hyped since the teams played in November, looked like it was headed for Blowout Land just 10 minutes in. The Big Red led 3-0 before most folks came in from the cold and found their seats.

The Crimson, however, outscored Cornell 3-1 from that point on and had several chances to tie in the third. But just like its other three losses since late December, Harvard fell one goal short.

And Mazzoleni knew why.

“You gotta play three periods against a team like Cornell—not two,” he said. “You can’t give up two power play goals in the first five minutes and expect to win. We didn’t deserve to win.”

Harvard knew it had to stay away from two things: untimely penalties and early Cornell goals.

And it didn’t do either.

The Crimson’s early woes began 20 seconds into the game, when Noah Welch went in for high sticking. Eleven seconds after that, Cornell was up 1-0 and trainer Dick Emerson was on the ice helping Harvard goalie Dov Grumet-Morris work out the cobwebs after he got knocked in the head.

The clock read 19:29, Harvard was already down a goal, and Grumet-Morris was trying to blink and squint his way back to consciousness.

Heckuva start, huh?

It didn’t get much better. About four minutes later, another Harvard defenseman (Peter Hafner) took another ill-advised penalty (boarding on Chris Abbott), and another of the Big Red’s top scorers (Sam Paolini) made the Crimson pay with another power-play goal.

The game wasn’t even five minutes old, Cornell goalie Dave LeNeveu hadn’t seen a shot, and the bulk of the sold-out Harvard student section still hadn’t arrived, wooed into tardiness by the trappings of Beast Lite.

In its absence, Cornell fans dominated the barn. The Bright Center had indeed become Lynah East. Heck, it was Lynah North, South and West, too. It was Lynah Everywhere.

“Felt like a home game,” said Cornell forward Ryan Vesce.

The Big Red got even more comfortable a few minutes later when it went up 3-0.

Was this really happening? Was Harvard going to get routed in its biggest game on home ice in years? And is Beast Light really that good?

Mazzoleni called a time out, hoping to calm things down. His team was getting physically overwhelmed. Cornell looked bigger, faster and stronger. At that point, Harvard had more whiffs than scoring chances and would have needed to put at least four goals past LeNeveu, who hadn’t given up more than two in 15 starts.

Yep, the Crimson was up the proverbial creek, no paddle in sight.

But Harvard oh-so-slowly found its skating legs—and its confidence, more importantly—and drew the deficit to 3-2 thanks to absolutely gorgeous feeds by captain Dominic Moore to set up second-period goals by Dennis Packard and Tim Pettit.

“I don’t think anyone on the ice has better vision than Dominic Moore,” Pettit said.

The Crimson dominated much of the play during the last two periods, outshooting Cornell 28-19 during that span. But another defensive breakdown sealed Harvard’s fate on Vesce’s second of the night with 57 seconds left in the second.

Frustrated, Harvard defenseman Ryan Lannon broke his stick on the crossbar. And that pretty much summed it up. The Crimson couldn’t have imagined a worse goal at a worse time. Harvard had the momentum, and it was less than a minute from going into the second intermission down just one goal after nearly being run out of its own building in the first.

Goals that late in the period drive coaches bananas.

Absolutely bananas.

And, more often than not, goals that late in the period are critical.

This was the game-winner.

What now?

But hey, enough about the loss.

‘Get over it, dude,’ you say. ‘It’s Tuesday already, and I want to know why the heck you think I should blow off a week at the beach for a hockey tournament.’

Fair enough. Here it goes. From here on out, Harvard is playing for its postseason life. I’m no math whiz, but a cursory look at the geek-tastic Pairwise Rankings, almost always a direct prognosticator of NCAA tournament selection, reveals that the Crimson’s No. 16 standing this late in the season—in a 16-team tournament—has pushed its bubble to the point of bursting.

So as the final seconds ticked away on Saturday night, the following things became clear: Just like last season, Harvard will likely have to win the ECAC tournament, and the automatic bid that goes with it, in order to make the NCAAs. And, just like last season, it’s probably going to have to beat Cornell to do it. And, just like last season, when it took the Crimson five overtime periods to win the league championship and make the national tournament, it’s not going to be easy.

And Harvard is hoping now that, just like last season, it’s able to play its best hockey when one bad bounce off a skate is all it takes to start your offseason protein diet.

A lot of stuff to worry about, huh?

Here’s the good news. This year, the Crimson has proven itself to be a very focused bunch. These players want to get back to the NCAA tournament.

Badly.

And it’s still in their hands.

“I’m not really sure about how the bids and the rankings are going to work out,” Moore said. “That’s pretty much out of our hands at this point. We just have to take it one game at a time. And if we have to win the playoffs to get a bid, then that’s what we have to do.”

The standard was set last season when Harvard stepped on the ice at an NCAA Regional for the first time since 1994. And it’s safe to say the team—which is much better this year than last—would be disappointed if it didn’t get back.

The players and coaches now have about a month to be sure that doesn’t happen.

It promises to be an intriguing story—more intriguing, I assure you, than what happens after too much Beast Lite.

So forget the beach. Real party’s in Albany.

—Staff writer Jon Paul Morosi can be reached at morosi@fas.harvard.edu.