ON HOCKEY: Crimson Shows it Can Win the Title

PROVIDENCE, R.I.—For the fourth time in four seasons, the Harvard men’s hockey team is heading back to the ECAC semifinals. And after a season of surprises, the Crimson has finally hit the stride that many pundits, myself included, thought would be its modus operandi from Day One.

Just like last season’s playoffs, Harvard is playing strong, physical defense, getting steady performances in net from junior Dov Grumet-Morris, and has its special teams units functioning at full capacity. And this season, unlike last, Harvard enters the ECAC’s own little Final Four with two interconnected advantages: momentum and an extra night’s rest.

While the Crimson spent last night recovering and relaxing, its Albany opponents spent the night waging intense Game 3s. Harvard’s first round opponent—the Big Green of Dartmouth—rallied from a 1-0 series deficit to defeat Rensselaer. And the other semifinal matchup features Colgate against Clarkson. Every team besides Harvard was forced to go the full three games, meaning that the Crimson will have an extra day of rest heading into the tournament.

But more important than an extra day to recover is the momentum that Harvard has accumulated over the last three weeks of the year.

Since the season’s final regular season game—a 4-0 blanking of Dartmouth—Harvard has won five straight, including sweeps of Vermont and now Brown. The Crimson is riding the longest winning streak in the ECAC and appears favorably positioned to make a run for the ECAC Championship and the Whitelaw Trophy, with the NCAA auto-bid that it entails.

Harvard’s win on Friday was convincing, but it was the win on Saturday night that convinced me the Crimson will make a third-straight appearance in the NCAA Tournament. In particular, two moments—characterized by a dogged determination and just a bit of cocksure swagger—stand out as key to Harvard’s success, both this weekend and potentially in the long term.

The first such moment came midway through the second, after Brown forward Shane Mudryk deposited a loose rebound in a wide-open net with 9:24 to go. That tally made the count 2-0 and set many a Crimson fan (and there were a fair number of them that traveled down I-95 to see their team play) on edge. After all, Harvard was facing arguably the best netminder in the nation in Yann Danis and a more-than-solid defensive corps in front of him. The thought that the Bears would sit on its lead, trapping through the neutral zone and icing the puck whenever it came into their defensive end, certainly crossed my mind.

Apparently, it didn’t cross Harvard’s. Or, at least, not Tim Pettit and Charlie Johnson’s minds. Just 27 ticks and a fast rush into the Brown end by Johnson and Pettit later, a number of Crimson gloves were in the air in celebration, the product of nice pass from Johnson to Pettit, who was sitting on Danis’s doorstep. Before Brown could even think about sitting on a two-goal lead, Harvard had cut the deficit to one.

“To counter within 25 seconds really changed the momentum at that point in time,” Harvard coach Mark Mazzoleni said.

Assistant captain Tyler Kolarik agreed. “That was key—the most important shift in hockey is the shift after a goal, for either team. [Pettit’s goal] was a big lift,” he said.

Pettit’s quick comeback goal set the tone for the rest of the game. Harvard outshot Brown 31-19 from the second period on and was in firm control when Pettit again scored. Or only appeared to, in the opinion of referee Scott Hansen.

Because the goal light did not come on, and because the puck ricocheted so quickly back out of the net, Hansen concluded that it must have hit the post, despite the absence of the telltale clang.

“I saw our bench clear and I saw Yann’s head go down, and that was the signal to me that we had scored,” Grumet-Morris said.

“Obviously [the officals] had a little meeting and decided the puck didn’t go in,” he continued. “It’s part of hockey, it’s part of the game. And, fortunately enough for us we were able to get the goal [to win it].”

Yes, they were.

And therein lies the other key moment, and the other example of Harvard’s dogged determination. You have to set the scene: Harvard players streaming off the bench, Danis starting to skate out of his net and towards the Brown bench, Bears’ players left and right looking around dejectedly. But no red light and no whistle, at least until Hansen decided he should make a call. After a quick conference with the linesmen, the Crimson players were sent back to the bench and play was resumed, with the score still knotted at 2-2.

It would have been easy, perhaps, to come up with excuses. The Crimson had none. All it had was a reinvigorated effort that soon led to the overtime winner off the stick of junior Tom Cavanagh.

“I thought it was in—just give credit to our guys, no one quit,” Kolarik said. “We could have easily hung it up…but we just kept going. I think everyone just sensed we were going to win that game.”

There’s that cocksure swagger.

I certainly didn’t sense it, not really. I was nervous, nervous that Danis would stonewall the Crimson and force a Game 3, nervous that the call—it was the wrong one, by all accounts—would take the wind out of Harvard’s sails.

It didn’t.

It reinvigorated them and sent them, dogged determination and cocksure swagger intact, onto Albany and a chance for another run through the ECAC playoffs.

—Staff writer Timothy M. McDonald can be reached at tmcdonal@fas.harvard.edu.