Momentum Swings Mark Big Red Win

It looked like a game-changing save when Harvard goaltender John Daigneau made it, sliding right to cover the post and then sprawling backwards to stop the shot with his glove.

It was an acrobatic change of direction that made the Bright Center crowd roar Friday night, and once the puck was cleared away from Daigneau, who had collapsed across the crease, the Crimson marched down the ice and scored a power-play goal to tie the game 2-2.

If you’d turned in the stands to discuss Daigneau’s save—or looked down in the press box to scribble a note, for that matter—you might have missed the score. But nearly eight minutes into the second period, Daigneau’s contortion caused a two-goal swing that kept Harvard (3-2-0, 3-2-0 ECAC) in the game.

What could have been a 3-1 Big Red lead—coming on the Cornell penalty kill, no less—turned into a knotted score, a brand new hockey game with more than a period and a half left to play.

“That was an incredible save by John,” said Crimson coach Ted Donato ’91, “a short-handed effort where he laid out. As the game of hockey goes, we came right down and scored, and I thought it really changed the momentum of the game.”

Harvard came out firing in the third frame and took a 3-2 lead at 8:43, when Charlie Johnson broke towards the net and knocked home a perfectly timed cross-slot pass from Kevin Du.

For the next five minutes, the Crimson forecheck foiled every Big Red opportunity. Finally, No. 3 Cornell (4-2-0, 3-1-0) took a timeout.

“It looked like everything was going well,” Johnson said. “They weren’t getting any sustained pressure—we were kind of cycling it down in their zone—and we had a bunch of chances to make it 4-2 there, which would have put the game away.”

But just as Daigneau’s second-period save swung the momentum in Harvard’s favor, the Big Red’s third-period timeout swung it right back around.

With just over five minutes left to play, Harvard forwards Mike Taylor and Kevin Du fought along the right boards to clear the puck.

They were close—“Just one little chip, and it would have been out,” Johnson said—but Cornell kept the puck in, and Doug Krantz let loose a slapshot Daigneau never even saw.

“It was a bad break,” the goalie said, “but it’s the game-tying goal. The game wasn’t over then.”

It didn’t take long, though. Cornell held court the rest of the way, and at 17:29, Topher Scott knocked home a rebound from Daigneau’s right that put the Big Red (4-2-0, 3-1-0) up 4-3, the score at which the game ended.

Cornell’s skaters left the Bright Center ice with a one-goal victory.

This after trailing by that same margin with 5:06 left to play, this after watching Daigneau and the Crimson steal the momentum and nearly carry it to game’s end.

“It was pretty quick,” Johnson said. “I didn’t see it coming. It looked like everything was going well—we were playing well.”

The tide had somehow turned, and the Crimson ended the contest trying to play catch-up.

“[The Big Red] got a little momentum, had some sustained pressure and some bounces go their way, and they got two goals,” Daigneau said. “It’s a tough way to lose.”

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