Brown Downs Men's Hockey on Senior Night

With just under two minutes to play, Raphael Girard stepped off the ice to make room for an extra attacker. He will not know for another week whether that play will be his last at home, but Saturday’s final score has the odds stacked against Harvard and the senior goaltender.

On Senior Night at the Bright-Landry Hockey Center, 30 saves from Bears freshman goaltender Tyler Steel lifted the Brown men’s hockey team to a 2-0 win over the Crimson. A pair of goals in the middle frame from sophomore forward Nick Lappin and senior defenseman Jake Goldberg gave the Bears the separation in the conference standings that they were looking for.

Harvard (9-14-4, 5-11-4 ECAC) entered the evening one point behind the visitors for the coveted eighth spot in the conference standings.  ECAC teams that finish fifth through eighth in the conference receive home ice in the ECAC Tournament’s best-of-three opening round, which decides the schools that will face the conference’s top four regular season finishers in the quarterfinals.

“We want to play at home, so this was a huge game,” Brown coach Brendan Whittet said. “Playoff game type of mentality.”

Brown (11-13-3, 8-11-1) is now in control of its postseason fate, and wins by St. Lawrence and Dartmouth this weekend have helped push the Crimson to 11th place in the league. Harvard, which also lost to Yale, 5-2, on Friday, will now need to sweep Colgate and Cornell on the road and get help from a few other teams next weekend for another shot at playing under the Bright lights this season.

Harvard carried the play early and had several good looks in the first period against Steel, who skated away with the first shutout of his collegiate career. Sophomore forward Kyle Criscuolo created a near-2-on-0 opportunity with classmate Greg Gozzo up the left wing late in the frame, but the freshman goaltender kicked Criscuolo’s attempt aside.

“I thought in the first period [Harvard] took it to us really [well], and that’s where they had a lot of possession and a lot of good opportunities in that first period,” Whittet said. “I thought as the game wore on we settled into it a bit more and we were much more intelligent about what we did.”

The Bears quickly snuffed out any momentum that Harvard carried into the locker room. Crimson freshman forward Tyler Moy was whistled for holding 25 seconds into the second frame, and Brown struck moments later off the next draw in the Harvard zone. Sophomore center Mark Naclerio won the faceoff and sent a cross-crease pass to classmate Lappin, who lifted the puck over Girard’s left shoulder for the first goal of the game.

Harvard again controlled the pace for much of the period. The home team attempted 26 shots to Brown’s six in the middle frame, but a strong Bear blocking corps helped keep Steel perfect.

“I thought we played the majority of the game in their zone,” Harvard coach Ted Donato ’91 said. “I think [Brown] did a good job at blocking shots and having sticks and bodies in shot lanes.”

The Bears broke through on offense again with just over three minutes left in the frame. From the right point, Goldberg launched a shot that appeared to change direction through traffic on its way past Girard, with Lappin perhaps getting a piece of it for his second strike of the night. An official review, however, credited Goldberg with his second goal of the season.

The goal all but sounded the death knell for the home team. Harvard is now 0-11-1 when trailing after two periods this season.

In the third, Brown put the clamps on the Crimson for the most even 20 minutes of the game. Harvard freshman forward Alex Kerfoot challenged Steel in the crease during 6-on-5 play in the final minute, but the rookie could not get the elevation on the puck that he needed.

After the final horn, Harvard lined up on the blue line to recognize Girard and the three other graduating seniors. Donato was pleased with the team’s work on the ice on Saturday night, which he compared favorably to the team’s unbeaten performance at St. Lawrence and Clarkson last weekend, but it will now take something special to get the squad back to the Bright.

“I had no issue with our effort,” Donato said. “Our execution on things certainly can and needs to improve, but I thought our guys played hard and did a lot of the things we needed to do to give ourselves a chance to win.... I told them to keep their head up, and we’ll go back at it next weekend.”

—Staff writer Michael D. Ledecky can be reached at michael.ledecky@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @MDLedecky.