Doing the Incredible: Men's Hockey Upsets No. 1 BC

It was anxiously, almost eerily quiet during the third period of last night’s game between the Harvard men’s hockey team and No. 1 Boston College (BC). The crowd filling much of the Bright Hockey Center would catch its breath audibly, then force nervous applause during stoppages of play. But for the most part, it remained silent, afraid to jinx the spectacle unfolding on the ice.

Finally—with just two-and-a-half minutes remaining—Eagles’ senior blueliner Andrew Alberts tucked away in the penalty box and the Crimson (3-2-1, 2-2-1 ECACHL) guarding a 3-1 lead—the fans relaxed and were ready to heckle.

“Overrated,” the Harvard student section jeered at BC’s skaters as the latter group milled about in frustration as their chances and perch atop the national rankings slipped away.

“Good college hockey game,” surmised Eagles coach Jerry York after the fact. “We worked hard, and they were just better than we were tonight.”

But if you’d watched the early minutes of last night’s contest, you wouldn’t have seen that coming. BC (4-2-1, 2-0-1 Hockey East) tallied its lone goal just 62 seconds into the game, beating Harvard goalie Dov Grumet-Morris and taking the lead.

If you’d bitten your tongue and kept watching from the stands of the Bright Hockey Center, though, your patience would have been rewarded in spades.

“They did a very good job of coming out at the beginning of the game and taking it to us,” Grumet-Morris admitted. “So you give BC credit for playing well on the road at the beginning.

“I thought we responded well,” the netminder added, “because in a game, in a season, that’s going to happen.”

Indeed, Harvard entered the locker room for the first intermission up 2-1, the result of a gritty, aggressive offensive showing, opportunistic special teams and a blueline unit that kept the Eagles entirely off their collective game.

“I thought they played well,” Crimson coach Ted Donato ’91 said of his defensive corps. “We never gave [BC] any opportunities to spend as much time in the zone as they wanted, and that was key for us.

“We didn’t want to let their forwards have the puck with any time and space, because we know how good they can be with it.”

And with confidence behind the blueline, Harvard marched forward, attacking the Eagles relentlessly.

Freshman Jon Pelle, who stole the show last weekend with a three-point night against Yale and earned the ECACHL’s Rookie of the Week honors for his effort, was first to put the Crimson on the board, erasing the BC lead for good.

Skating to the right of Eagles goalie Matti Kaltiainen, Pelle popped in a rebound from the slightest of angles.

“[Senior Andrew Lederman] took the puck up high and good shot off,” said the freshman, who earned his second multi-point game last night. “The rebound came out to me and I corralled it and brought it over to the forehand. I looked up and didn’t see anybody in the net, so I just put it in.”

Lederman scored next as Harvard skated with a man-advantage—this after the Crimson failed to convert on its initial 5-on-3—this time with a straight slapper from dead-center.

It was the forward’s third straight game with a goal.

He notched the game-tying score against Yale and the game-winner against Princeton this weekend—this after scoring just one in the rest of his collegiate career.

Harvard now held a lead, though a one-goal first-period advantage over the top team in the country is little comfort.

“We almost expect that their power play is going to be very dangerous,” Donato noted.

But last night, the Crimson smothered nearly every Eagles shot with a solid defensive effort and an absolutely stifling penalty kill.

On the latter, Harvard went 5-for-5, redeeming itself entirely from Saturday’s Princeton showing, in which the unit managed only 3-for-7. The Crimson never discarded its offensive aggressiveness, spending much of its man-down time pushing towards the BC net.

And it seemed that every time the Eagles made a run at Grumet-Morris, there was a Harvard stick just waiting to intercept the puck and send it sailing the length of the ice.

“We concentrated on doing our own jobs,” Grumet-Morris explained of the unit, “and that’s the most important thing, because in a penalty kill, you have less guys. You need to worry about your area and your specific job. When you start running around, that’s when your team starts to have trouble.

“I thought we did a very good job,” he added.

“A lot of credit goes to the coaching staff for preparing us well and bringing us back to the basics, back to what we were doing before Princeton.”

Of course, the outcome might have been drastically different if not for a dazzling performance by Grumet-Morris himself.

The score very well might have been knotted at two 15:06 into the second frame, when Harvard blueliner Dave MacDonald was called for tripping and the Eagles’ Dave Spina was awarded a penalty shot.

“That would certainly have given us a little more lift,” York said of the opportunity.

But just as he did against Brown several weekends ago, Grumet-Morris refused to budge.

Inching forward in the crease as Spina weaved down the ice, the netminder managed to deflect the attempt with his glove, holding his team’s advantage and quashing a potential BC uprising.

“I think that when you stop a penalty shot,” Grumet-Morris said, “the most obvious and most important part of that is that they didn’t score, and in a 2-1 game, that is important.”

Pelle knocked in the Crimson’s final tally to give the home team some breathing room, though nearly 17 minutes of play still remained in the third frame.

Harvard stuck to its game, though, and the anticipation building in Bright was palpable.

As the final seconds melted away and the Crimson staved off a BC drive that included a 1:29 of an extra skater in the stead of its goalie, Matti Kaltiainen, the fans finally let their screams out.

Harvard was about to beat the Eagles. An unranked squad was about to down the nation’s top team.

The Crimson—which had managed just a trio of goals and no wins in its first three contests, going 1-for-17 on the power play—was on the verge of a three-power-play-goal win.

“We knew we were the underdogs,” Pelle said. “Every guy in that locker room believed that we could win. We knew that probably everyone outside the room didn’t think so, but we believed it, and we knew that was what it would take to get the win.”

—Staff writer Rebecca A. Seesel can be reached at seesel@fas.harvard.edu.