Crucial Matchup Awaits Men's Hockey

Coming back to Bright Hockey Center last Friday on the tail end of an eight-game winless streak, home ice proved to be quite sweet for the Harvard men’s hockey team.

The Crimson gained five points in the standings in four days with two dramatic wins over Yale and Brown and a come-from-behind tie against Dartmouth. In the process, Harvard leapfrogged from a tie for sixth to a tie for third in the standings.

The Crimson will look to continue its recent run of success Friday night in Hamden, Conn., where it will face off against Quinnipiac in a contest with serious standings and playoff implications.

It will be Harvard’s only game of the weekend, as the team will take time off in preparation for Monday night’s Beanpot opener.

The Crimson (6-6-9, 5-4-7 ECAC) currently sits just three points ahead of the Bobcats (13-8-5, 5-5-4), who haven’t seen any game action since Jan. 14. Because the teams drew, 2-2, in the Nov. 5 matchup, the victor in Friday night’s contest will come away with two vital points in the standings and, perhaps more importantly, the season series.

And since the results of season series serve as a tiebreaker, a win for either side could be the difference in earning a first-round bye in next month’s ECAC playoffs.

Harvard has never won at Quinnipiac.

“It’s a really important game,” said Harvard coach Ted Donato ’91. “It’s a nice test for us against a good team that should be well rested.”

“There’s a bunch of teams breathing down our necks,” junior forward Marshall Everson added. “We only get one game this weekend, so we have to make sure to get two points out of it. And just from a confidence standpoint, we need it going into the Beanpot.”

The Harvard attack may receive a timely boost from the return of junior forward Alex Fallstrom, who sat out the last four games due to injury.  A key component of the Crimson frontline when healthy, Fallstrom has averaged nearly a point per game played this season.

“We’re hopeful that [Fallstrom] will play,” Donato said. The nature of that injury is that there’s a bunch of testing that needs to go on. Some of it has taken place, but hopefully, we’ll have him available for us on Friday.”

But even in his absence, Harvard has managed to find the back of the net, especially on its power-play. Having scored at least one power play goal in 19 of 21 contests, the Crimson leads the nation with a 31.1 percent success rate on the man advantage.

That power-play prowess reared its head twice in the past week in critical moments for Harvard. Against Yale, Everson scored a power-play goal to give the Crimson a critical third-period lead. Four days later against Dartmouth, freshman forward Colin Blackwell, who has temporarily replaced Fallstrom in the first shift, found the back of the net on a 5-on-4 to force a program-record ninth tie.

“We’re not afraid to share the puck to make sure everybody is potentially dangerous out there,” Donato said. “We’ve gotten [goals] from a pretty good spread of guys, and I think that’s the key.”

Crucial to the power play’s success is Harvard’s leader in both goals and points, senior forward Alex Killorn. One season after scoring a team-high 15 goals in 34 games, Killorn has taken his game to a new level this season, scoring 14 times in just 21 games. His 26 points are good for fourth best in the league.

“From game one, he’s been our best player,” Everson said. “When we need a big play, he’s usually the guy to step up.”

And step up Killorn has. After his goal helped the Crimson tie a tough Cornell squad on Jan. 21, the senior nailed back-to-back game-winning goals against Yale and Brown en route to his second ECAC Player of the Week nod of the season.

But the late-game theatrics are a team-wide phenomenon. Time and time again the squad has mounted third-period comebacks in games to tie or, in some cases, to seal victories.

“It’s just a resiliency in this group of guys,” Killorn said. “It’s kind of a different mindset than we had last year, whereas we might’ve put our heads down and sulked a little bit if they started scoring. I think this year, we kind of take that as a challenge.”

The Crimson will face off against a Quinnipiac squad that, in addition to having one more point in the national rankings than Harvard, boasts the third best offense in the division. Sparking the attack are two of the top offensive threats in the ECAC: forwards Connor Jones and Jeremy Langlois.

Compound that with nearly a month off, and the Bobcats offense could be tough act to slow down.

In the background for the Crimson sits Monday’s first-round Beanpot matchup with No. 3 Boston University. Harvard upset the Terriers in a 5-4 thriller in last year’s Beanpot consolation game.

“Obviously the Beanpot is exciting. It seems like the city stops for those two weeks,” Killorn said. “But we’re not looking forward to that right now. We’ve got a game against Quinnipiac and two huge points.”

—Staff writer Robert S. Samuels can be reached at robertsamuels@college.harvard.edu.