Going into Saturday night's game against Colgate, the Harvard men's hockey team appeared to be back on track. The team chemistry was finally apparent and the Crimson was doubling its opponents' shot total.

Saturday's game, however, was a different story. The team began right where it left off, dominating the first two periods. But, as was the case early in the season, it faltered late; the Colgate stormed back from a 2-0 deficit to tie Harvard, 3-3.

"Maybe it wasn't Harvard's night," Kirk Nielsen said.

"Obviously it wasn't in the cards," head coach Ronn Tomassoni said. "This was a heavyweight fight. It was one of those games with a lot of contact."

More specifically, it was an Ali-Frazier, Balboa-Creed-type fight--chock full of blood, guts and violent momentum swings.

The first period was characterized by sloppy passing and erratic neutral-zone play as both teams struggled to generate offense.

"You've got to credit Colgate there," junior Kirk Nielsen said. "They came out with a conservative forecheck and it took us a little while to adjust."

The Crimson also had to learn how to adjust to the absence of last year's ECAC player of the year, Steve Martins.

A minor ankle sprain kept the All-American out of the game, forcing Tomassoni to jumble his lines. The hurting the precision that was evident the night before.

The Crimson finally started the scoring 15:15 into the period, when Bryan Lonsinger wheeled around at the blue line and fired a blistering shot past Colgate goalie Dan Brenzavich.

Harvard had been knocking on the door for some time in that period, before the speedy duo of Tommy Holmes and Joe Craigen set up Lonsinger.

Tomassoni's squad had two excellent power-play opportunities to start the second period, but were unable to even get a significant amount of shots on net. The absence of Martins certainly hurt the power-play units, which were 0-for-5 Saturday night and one for their last twenty-two. This specialty unit differs immensely from last year's team, whose power-play success hovered around 33 percent.

After matching penalties to Harvard's Geb Marett and Colgate's Dave Debusschere, Harvard took advantage of their speed during the four-on-four situation.

Bryan Lonsinger fed Perry Cohagen streaking up the ice, who placed a beautiful backhanded pass on the stick of Cory Gustafson. The senior right-winger then rocketed a shot into the top corner of the net, extending the lead to 2-0 at 15:20 of the second period.

After two periods, the game seemed in Harvard's hands. The Crimson had outshot Colgate, 18-12, and had constantly controlled the puck down in Colgate's zone.