Wild Men's Hockey Game Ends in Draw

PROVIDENCE, R.I.—There were penalties. There were fights. There were lead changes, bad bounces, and missed chances. There were last-second heroics.

But in the end, there was no winner.

In a contest that crammed an entire season’s worth of drama into 65 minutes, the Harvard men’s hockey team (10-15-2, 8-10-2 ECAC) relinquished a hard-fought two-goal lead in the game’s final seconds, settling for a 6-6 tie with Brown (9-12-6, 5-11-4) at Meehan Auditorium.

“[I’m] very disappointed and frustrated with how we finished the game,” said Crimson coach Ted Donato ’91, adding, “We’ve just got to play a little smarter, especially that late.”

A Bears penalty at 3:15 touched off a wild, six-goal, 11-penalty opening frame. Harvard took advantage of its extra man, with junior Mike Taylor slamming home a perfect feed from freshman Doug Rogers to put the Crimson up 1-0.

It was Harvard’s first special-teams goal in its last 17 power plays, but it would not be its last of the night. After Brown’s Jeff Prough responded with a man-advantage goal of his own, junior Alex Meintel managed to tip in an offering from captain Dylan Reese on the power play to regain the lead for the Crimson.

Once again, however, Brown evened the score. Prough swooped into the right faceoff circle and sent a wrist shot past freshman goalie Kyle Richter for the game’s fourth power play goal to tie the score at 2.

“[On] our penalty kill, obviously we’ve got to make some adjustments,” Donato said. “I thought that from the net on out, we allowed goals too easy.”

The teams traded scores once more to close out the period. Senior Kevin Du netted the game’s first even-strength goal, but the Bears then capitalized on a 5-on-3 to send the teams to the locker room knotted at 3.

“I thought we took some terrible penalties, and we gave them a chance to get back in the game on the power play,” Donato said.

The period had been marked by mounting bad blood between the two teams, with four different players called for hitting after the whistle and several scuffles.

“Both team struggled a bit lately, both us and them…and that’s what just turned into a good physical battle,” Reese said. “There was a lot of hitting tonight—some of the best of the year, for sure—so when that all comes together, you’re bound to have scuffles and a lot of penalties.”

While the teams had no problem finding the back of the net in the first period, Harvard ran into trouble in the second. A pair of Brown penalties gave the Crimson 1:42 of 5-on-3 play, an advantage that was compounded when a Bears defender lost his stick.

Despite facing just three men with two sticks between them, Harvard’s power-play unit failed to score, allowing Brown to kill both penalties.

“I think once the kid lost his stick, you saw a little bit more of guys [playing] out of position, just trying to hit the puck to the net,” Reese said. “We probably should have set up back in position and run the plays that we usually run in the 5-on-3.”

While the penalties kept coming in the second period, with the teams accruing seven more infractions, the Crimson’s penalty kill improved dramatically, shutting down the Bears power-play unit for the duration of the frame.

“[In] the second period, we did a good job,” Donato said of his team’s penalty kill, adding, “Our guys played hard, they battled; I think the effort was there.”

Brown, however, was able to seize the lead on an even-strength goal. The Bears’ Sean McMonagle wrested the puck away from Reese near the top of the Harvard zone and then beat Richter top-shelf to give the Bears their first lead, 4-3, at 12:11.

Harvard responded when another 5-on-3 opportunity gave the power play a shot at redemption. Freshman Alex Biega sent a wobbling puck past Brown goalie Dan Rosen at 18:29 to tie the score at 4.

The Crimson appeared to pull away in the third period, scoring twice within a minute to build up a 6-4 lead at the frame’s halfway mark. Biega broke the tie with his second goal of the night, hitting paydirt with a mid-range shot from the right faceoff circle at 9:59.

Fifty-eight seconds later, Meintel added some insurance with his second score. His shot caromed off of Rosen’s shoulder, arching backwards over the netminder and across the goal line.

After the Bears pulled within one with less than five minutes to go, it was, fittingly, a penalty that shaped the game’s final minutes. Sophomore Jimmy Fraser was whistled for hooking at 18:58, giving Brown a chance to pull Rosen for a 6-on-4 advantage.

“Stupid penalties down the stretch, no doubt about it,” Reese said. “We took two penalties within five minutes, one with a minute left—they’re just unacceptable.”

After a grueling contest that had thus far featured 22 penalties, four ties, and three lead changes, Harvard only had to endure one more minute to escape with a win. But with 13.3 seconds left to play, the Bears’ Sean Hurley launched a shot from the blue line that found its way through Richter to even the score one last time.

“The game-tying goal, to me, is one that we need to have as a save,” Donato said.

With neither team able to break through in overtime, the final score stood at six—a deadlock that, given the circumstances, may have felt more like a loss for the Crimson.

“If you come away with a tie in any other game where you play really hard, I would say, ‘What can you do?’” Reese said. “But when you’re up 6-4 with five minutes left, there’s no excuse to lose the game.”

—Staff writer Daniel J. Rubin-Wills can be reached at drubin@fas.harvard.edu.