Eagles Prove Too Much For Unruly Crimson

Things went from bad to worse last night for the Harvard men’s hockey team (5-12-3, 5-7-3 ECAC).

The Crimson’s slow start quickly disintegrated into a collective mess by the beginning of the third period in the first round of the 58th Annual Beanpot matchup last night against No. 14 Boston College (14-8-2, 10-6-2 Hockey East).

The Eagles scored three in the final period to rout Harvard by a final score of 6-0.

“It’s obviously very disappointing to our team, especially on such a great national stage,” captain Alex Biega said. “I think quite simply we just got outplayed by the better team tonight.”

The Crimson’s disheartening performance comes after a slight uptrend in the team’s performance in the past few weeks. Harvard notched consecutive wins over ranked opponents, then No.5 Yale, then No.8 Quinnipiac, and then No.13 Union, before falling 2-1 to Princeton on Friday.

“I think we’ve certainly built some positive momentum over the last month,” Harvard coach Ted Donato ’91 said. “You know, this is a tough pill to swallow.”

This year’s dismal performance in the Beanpot sharply contrasts with last year’s first-round result against then-No.1 Boston University. Biega tallied the would-be tying goal moments after the final buzzer, allowing the Terriers to hold on for the win.

In another stark break from recent play, the Crimson was embarrassingly plagued with penalties throughout the course of last night’s game. Prior to this matchup, Harvard averaged just 11.8 penalty minutes per game, the 11th-lowest in the nation.

Yesterday, the Crimson took 17 penalties and spent a total of 58 minutes in the box.

The level of play took a decidedly ugly turn midway through the third. Six penalties were dished out in a two-minute period as players from both teams were thrown into the box for hitting, slashing and hooking.

But Harvard—not BC—was the culprit for the majority of the third period brawls. The Crimson committed ten penalties in that period alone—including three ten-minute majors—killing any attempt at a late comeback.

“When you give a team like [BC] 12 power plays, I don’t like anybody’s chances with that group of forwards they have,” Donato said.

BC got things going early in the first with a power play goal from forward Ben Smith. Eagles forward Brian Gibbons collected the rebound of Steven Whitney’s attempt at goal and took it behind the goal. Gibbons snuck the puck to Smith, who powered the puck into the net from point-blank range to put BC up 1-0.

The Crimson elevated its play to the highest point it would see in the night in the waning minutes of the first. With two minutes left to play, sophomore forward Alex Killorn powered past two Eagles defenders to spark Harvard’s offense to launch four consecutive shots at Eagles netminder John Muse.

“I thought the first 10-12 minutes, they carried the play,” Donato said. “Their speed put us back on our heels but I thought the last six to seven minutes of the first period we had some great chances and Muse came up big.”

Though Muse certainly played a hand in maintaining BC’s first period lead, the Eagles offense took flight immediately at the start of the second. An unguarded BC Matt Price scored for the Eagles just 18 seconds into the period with a hard slapshot over junior goaltender Kyle Richter’s shoulder.

Boston College’s improvement in play and shooting as the game progressed didn’t help the Crimson’s cause either. Chris Keider’s one-timer from the top of the left circle made the game 4-0 and then Carl Sneep’s slapshot from behind the blue line easily navigated its way through the Harvard defense and behind Richter to make the final scoreline 6-0.

“I’d like to give credit to Boston College, clearly the better team tonight,” Donato said. “I think they beat us to all the loose pucks. I think [they] used their speed to force us into taking penalties and I don’t think we gave ourselves a chance to win.”

—Staff writer Lucy D. Chen can be reached at lucychen@fas.harvard.edu.