M. Hockey Roars Past Yale Again

NEW HAVEN, Conn.—It was mid-November. Harvard was 0-2-1 on paper, 1-for-17 on the power play and just about dead on the ice.

And after two and a half periods against Yale in the Bright Hockey Center, the Crimson was once again trailing—this time by a goal. The crowd was ready for another loss.

But suddenly, out of the blue, Harvard tallied three goals in the final 5:36 for a 3-1 victory. The offensive gave a crucial boost to the team’s collective confidence, which had been, until then, fraught with early-season struggles.

With that victory in hand, the Crimson would go on to take eight of its next nine contests, knocking off four top-15 teams in the process.

It was not at all unlike the previous winter, when Harvard, mired in a deep slump, pulled off a miracle in the Bulldogs’ Ingalls Rink.

Then, the Crimson struck for six unanswered goals, marking a spectacular comeback in the belly of the Yale Whale and causing then-captain Kenny Smith ‘04 to observe, hopefully, that “this is the type of game that can push a team over the hump.”

And indeed, the team went 9-3-1 in its next 13 contests en route to an ECAC postseason title.

So this past Saturday night, the prospect of another Harvard comeback over the Bulldogs was hardly unexpected.

Yale took a 1-0 lead at 10:33 into the first period, when Jeff Hristovski flipped the puck over a sprawling Dov Grumet-Morris. The Whale crowd serenaded the latter with the old goalie favorite, “It’s all your fault! It’s all your fault!”

Just six seconds later, though, and before the announcer could even credit the goal, Harvard freshman Dave Watters—not even a regular in the lineup—stole the puck off a faceoff and netted the equalizer.

The belly of the Whale went silent.

“We preach a lot as a coaching staff…about the importance of having really good, tough, disciplined, hard-nosed shifts after we score a goal,” admitted Yale coach Tim Taylor ’63.

“You work so hard to get a lead, and then the next shift, they drop the puck, and six seconds later the game’s tied.”

And that wasn’t all.

At 13:58, the Bulldogs tallied again, and again, the Crimson had an answer—this one 43 seconds later, off the stick of freshman Jon Pelle, silencing the belly of the Whale for a second time.

Harvard would take the contest 5-3—a third straight comeback over Yale—and Taylor later remarked that “those back goals are killers.”

“It’s a momentum-changer,” he added, “and it happened to us twice.”

THE BAIT

As the 19-day exam layoff ended and the Crimson readied for its weekend series against Princeton and Yale, Harvard coach Ted Donato ’91 had found the perfect motivation for his team: 2-8-2.

It would behoove the Harvard skaters to keep that 2-8-2 in mind, for it was the squad’s record in post-exam series over the last six years. Two wins in 12 tries.

“When Coach Donato brought that statistic up to us,” said captain Noah Welch, “we were all kind of pissed, thinking, ‘There’s no way we’re going to be a part of that.’”

The Crimson players took the bait.

“It made us play a little harder,” Welch said of the 2-8-2, because nobody “wanted to be a part of that streak.”

According to Welch and alternate captains Ryan Lannon and Tom Cavanagh, Harvard’s preparation, fitness and focus before this first post-exam weekend far surpassed that of previous years. The players possessed, in Cavanagh’s words, “the right mindset.”

The leaders were firm, advising their teammates to skate every day on which they were not actually taking exams.

“Anyway, there aren’t any guys [on the team] that want to study all day,” Welch added, laughing.

The extra effort paid dividends—namely, a seven-goal thrashing of Princeton on Friday and a hard-fought victory over Yale the next night.

And the old 2-8-2—well, explained Lannon, that the record “was something we took personally, thinking this shouldn’t be the case.

“Just because we have a couple weeks off of school doesn’t mean we should lose that edge.”

POWER RANGERS

Entering this past weekend, the Crimson was 1-for-17 with the man-advantage in its last four contests.

“In the Mariucci Classic, [the power play] was bad, and then in the Colgate game, it was horrible,” Welch said, explaining the first three games, in which Harvard converted just one of 12 chances.

But despite an 0-for-5 showing against the Big Red, the captain noted, “the Cornell game I thought was good.”

“We were getting our chances,” Welch said. “And again, you want to get goals, but it also changes momentum if you can get a couple good chances.”

And this weekend, the Crimson got both chances and goals, going 5-for-15 against the Tigers and the Bulldogs.

Welch chalked this weekend’s improved performance up to puck movement.

“I told guys in practice, ‘let’s play on the power play almost like Coach just put us on, and there’s a good chance that we might get kicked off if we don’t produce.’ I think that we’d all gotten comfortable.

“In trying to play like your job’s going to be taken—which it ultimately will [if you don’t perform]—we kind of kept things simple and started to move the puck more.”

SLAPSHOTS

Yale was called for 13 separate penalties—including five of the six third-period whistles—for a total of 34 penalty minutes…Grumet-Morris is currently fifth in the nation in goals against average, 1.78, and second in save percentage, .941…Harvard is still last—and thus best—in the nation on the list of penalty minutes, averaging just 13.2 per game…With a 7-for-10 performance this weekend, the Crimson penalty kill dropped to 78.4 percent, dropping the team to 53rd. “The effort’s there,” said assistant coach Bobby Jay, “but the execution isn’t.”

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