"I think we deserved this win," Tomassoni said. "There's no doubt in my mind that we played much better hockey this evening than we did last night, although we still need to focus on playing 60 minutes of hockey every night, especially going into next weekend."

A point emphasized by Martins play--he is so often a highly visible gauge of his teammates' play, and like the rest of the Crimson, he took about a period to get mentally into the game.

"What a stupid, stupid penalty," Martins said of his roughing infraction which wiped out a 5-on-3 Harvard power play. "There's no room for plays like that, especially when we're heading for the NCAA's and teams that we can't get away with stuff like that against."

But by the final stanza, the Cantabrigians were rolling, and Martins put dual exclamation points on the win. First came a point-blank, Cannon blast of a slapshot, a power-play goal at :56 of the third which surprised even Martins.

"I thought I had about 20 seconds to shoot it, and I thought in slow-motion, 'I've got a shot, here it goes...'" he said. "I was able to put it top shelf, higher than I actually thought I could get it."

And then he tallied the game-clincher, which came just over three minutes after Dan Dufresne's first goal of the year had pulled Cornell within 4-3. Fitting that he scored from his knees, for Martins' immense talents deserve a genuflection every now and then.

"He's got a lot of talent, a lot of tools, and when he combines them with his hard work, you really can't stop a guy like that," McCann said. "He was really focused tonight, and that brought on quite a tremendous effort." HARVARD, 5-3 at Bright Hockey Center Cornell  2  0  1  --  3 Harvard  2  1  2  --  5

First Period

Cor--Lopatka 8 (Papp) 4:17.

Har--Farrell 26 (Martins, Baird) 12:22. (PP)

Har--McCann 17 (Martins) 13:30.

Cor--Sancimino 12 (Drouin, Bumstead) 17:07. (PP)

Second Period

Har--Coughlin 11 (Martins) 19:44.

Third Period