Give the Yale men's hockey team a bona-fide Hobey Baker candidate, a future Olympic coach, a number 10 national-ranking and a chance to move within one point of first place in the ECAC, and maybe--just maybe--it will win in Bright Hockey Center. (It's never won here.)

But tack on 11 penalties, take just 19 shots and line up against a team with fresh legs and a truckload of confidence and the Bulldogs are just chomping at old leather.

That's what happened last night, as Harvard sailed to a well-executed 4-1 win over Yale Coach Tim Taylor and his band of hockey upstarts. Harvard junior Chris Baird tossed in one goal and two assists, while senior Matt Mallgrave and Captain Ted Drury each chipped in two points (goal, assist) to move the Crimson to 16-2-1 overall and 13-1-1 ECAC.

With the win, the first-place Crimson (27 points) distanced itself further from Yale (22 points), which had crept up to second-place after the loss to Rensselaer one week ago. RPI, meanwhile, edged Dartmouth, 4-3, to move into second place with 23 points.

Fresh off its victory in the Bean-pot, the debut of its own line of glossy trading cards and its return to Bright Hockey Center, Harvard set the tone it wanted early. A skate-and-shoot attack helped the Crimson outgun Yale 37-19 in shots and overwhelm Yale sophomore goaltender Todd Sullivan.

"We knew it was a big game coming in to get focused after the Beanpot and you could tell from the first period that we were flying," Baird said.

Harvard junior forward Brian Farrell (one assist) offered a slightly more pointed assessment: "I thought we shut them down completely. The shot totals tell the whole story."

Harvard's blue-line, meanwhile, has returned to form after a shaky debut two weeks ago. Yale's power-play, featuring Hobey Baker candidate senior Mark Kauffman, is the best in the nation (clicking at 33 percent), but you wouldn't have known that last night. The tag-team of Drury and sophomore Steve Martins on Harvard's two penalty killing units held Yale to just one-for-seven.

"We played as well as you can play for two periods. We got a little ragged in the third, but overall it was a very good win," Coach Ronn Tomassoni said. "One thing we really did very well was not giving up the central zone, clogging up the middle and playing great team defense."

The Crimson took the lead it would never reliniquish 3:19 into the game, as Captain Ted Drury worked a little Hobey magic to put the Crimson up by one. In a move only the former Olympian could pull off, Drury raced down the left side of the ice, wrapped up in the clutches of Yale freshman John Emmons. As he recovered a Chris Baird rebound, Drury flicked the puck back to clear it. As the disc sailed high, it landed on the pads of Yale sophomore goalie Todd Sullivan and bounced into the net.

Despite two back-to-back power-plays, Yale couldn't quite break through, as the Crimson swarmed on any skater who moved into its defensive zone. Sullivan did the same to Harvard for the remainder as well, slapping away a number of shots from fiery forwards Steve Martins and Brian Farrell.

Yale Coach Tim Taylor may be a remarkable coach (he's heading to the Olympics in 1994), but there's one thing you can't teach: discipline. And Yale showed about as much discipline as Bart Simpson in the second stanza, giving Harvard five extra-man chances, which the ever-opportunistic Crimson explolited.

Harvard tacked on three goals, the first at 2:06 when Martins cleared a perfect pass to Steve Flomenhoft (camped out in front of net) who slipped the puck through. Three minutes later, Harvard continued to dazzle Yale with its interior passing, as Mallgrave completed a Drury-to-Baird sequence, dumping the puck into the right side of the net. With Eli Jamie Lavish in the sin-bin for hitting from behind, Harvard finished its second period scoring when Baird succeeded in deflecting a Farrell shot from the point into the net to put the Crimson up 4-1 at 6:45.

"They overplaying Matt [Mall-grave] and I just got my stick on Brian's shot that time," said Baird, who kept deflecting the puck into the stands all net.

The winds of blowout began wafting through spacious Bright, as Harvard succeeded in limiting Yale's infamous power-play to zero shots with the Crimson down two men. But Yale countered as the first Harvard player returned from the box, when Eli senior Jack Duffy dumped in a rebound off goalie Aaron Israel at 19:10 to score Yale's lone goal.