Post-Exam Break-Out

SCHENECTADY, N.Y.—Members of the Union men’s hockey team needed only to look at the box scores from No. 10 Harvard’s weekend games to know what was coming last night at Messa Rink.

You couldn’t have counted the Crimson’s Friday and Saturday night goals on two hands (12 in all), and last night’s contest, though hard-fought in the most literal of senses, proved no different—an 8-1 Crimson victory.

“Any time you see a team that comes in struggling a little bit, you want to jump on them and try to keep that negative feeling,” said Harvard coach Ted Donato ’91, referencing the Dutchmen’s three losses in four games. “Our guys, we really tried to concentrate on our shots coming out of the gate, and did a good job of keeping it simple early, and we made a couple of real nice plays.”

The victory over Union (10-17-1, 7-10-0 ECAC) gives the Crimson (3-5-2, 10-4-1) 20 goals since Saturday, and this contest, like the others, was a barn-burner from the very beginning.

After an early Harvard penalty kill, senior Rob Flynn knocked home the team’s very first shot at 3:22, beating freshman goaltender Justin Mrazek for a lead the Crimson would never relinquish.

“We wanted to make sure we had a good start,” Flynn explained, adding “I just tried to get mine off as quick as possible.”

And it was a strategy the entire team employed: shoot early and shoot often.

Harvard managed 35 shots on goal—12 in the first and third periods and 11 in the middle frame—for a relentless attack that resulted in yet another hefty box score.

Tom Walsh doubled the Crimson’s lead two-and-a-half minutes later, and Flynn needed only 21 more seconds to make it 3-0.

Between the pipes for just 5:04, three goals and one save, Mrazek was yanked in favor of junior Kris Mayotte. The latter managed to stop the first period bleeding, but it was too late—the damage had been done.

And, said Donato, “We were very aware that we wanted to score the next goal. They started the second period with a power play, and it was important for us to kill that off.”

Harvard did that with little difficulty—in fact, sophomore Steve Mandes earned the Crimson’s first shorthanded goal of the year when he stripped the puck and punched it home unassisted.

Two more strikes put Harvard up 6-0, but the hits—hard all night—kept coming from both sides.

Frustrations boiled over as the second frame wound down, when a shoving match evolved into an all-out melee at the Union end of the ice. Players scuffled all around Mayotte’s goalmouth, and after several minutes of untangling the pile of bodies, when the referees had broke up the dozen or so skaters, the ice was strewn with broken sticks and lost gloves.

It took the referees another several moments to tally the damages, but in the end, 11 penalties were assessed for a total of 33 minutes.

The Crimson scored thrice more, but goaltender Dov Grumet-Morris would not celebrate his 100th career game with a shutout. Rather, he yielded the crease to junior John Daigneau after allowing Union’s lone goal 7:25 into the third period, smiling all the way to the bench.

Dutchmen coach and former Harvard assistant Nate Leaman showed no traces of a smile, however. At the completion of the game, Leaman locked the dressing-room door and did not return to speak to the media for 64 minutes.

It was that kind of night for the home-team, as it has been for all three arenas the Crimson has visited since Friday night.

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