For the Harvard men's hockey team, the last weekend of hockey before the exam break was pivotal.

A strong showing could have left the team in a fine position in the ECAC standings, even after the team returned from exams. A poor performance could have left the team in as low as 10th place when they resumed play in February.

Despite this, the Crimson turned in one of their worst combined efforts of the season in Friday night's 4-2 loss to Union. But with the heightened urgency that it must have felt after the loss, the team rebounded with a convincing 6-1 win over Rensselaer.

Harvard 6, RPI 1

Where were you at around 9 p.m. on Saturday night? If you weren't at Bright Hockey Center, then you missed the most explosive offensive period in recent Harvard hockey memory.

Three minutes into the second period of Harvard's game against RPI, freshman winger Brett Chodorow broke down the right side of the ice, tearing across the RPI blueline. Spotting junior Henry Higdon, Chodorow zipped a pass for a Higdon one-timer into the upper lefthand corner of the Engineer net.

The shot was perfect; the execution, sublime. Coming into its last game before exams, Harvard was averaging only 2.35 goals per game. Perfect and sublime were not exactly the buzzwords of the Crimson offense.

But Saturday night? Ah, what a difference a day makes.

"We've been resilient all year long and we've been involved in so many close games," Tomassoni said." [Friday night] was not a very good night for this hockey team; but not only did they bounce back...they did it in so many ways that we needed."

Higdon's tally was one of Harvard's three power-play goals on the night and one of the five scored in just the 20 minutes of that second period.

Sometimes, when it rains it pours; Saturday night, even Lady Luck's drizzle added to the overall drenching applied by the Crimson offense.

Ninety seconds after his blast and with the game tied at one, Higdon innocently slapped the puck deep behind the RPI net during a Crimson power play. RPI goaltender Joel Laing went behind his net to make the play; the puck, however, had second thoughts, hitting a friendly slab of the back boards and bouncing onto the stick of sophomore Rob Millar. The tap-in goal was Millar's eighth of the season and gave Harvard a lead it never relinquished. RPI  1 Harvard  6

Union  4 Harvard  2

Nine minutes later, sophomores Ethan Oberman and Clayton Rodgers notched goals of their own just 24 seconds apart.

With the period starting so well, you wouldn't have thought that it could have ended more dramatically--but it did.

Harvard gave the Engineers a chance to get right back in the hockey game, giving them a 5-on-3 advantage for a full two minutes--which the Crimson killed with some style. Then, with two minutes left in the period, RPI surrounded the Harvard net, but freshman goalie J.R. Prestifilippo (31 saves on the night) rejected three straight close-range shots, his last deflection sending the Crimson up the ice on its own offensive rush. With the echo of Prestifilippo's stick slapping against the ice, the battle cry sounded once more.

Harvard began to pressure Laing again. On another rush, sophomore Craig Adams broke from right to left into the RPI zone, collected a lead pass from Millar and cut towards the Engineer net. With 20 seconds left in the period, Adams slipped by the one defenseman in his path and finished his rush with a wrister into the back of the net, giving Harvard its first four-goal lead of the season.