After two earlier power-play attempts, however, the ECAC's leading man-up unit (28 percent success rate) finally connected with a crushing tally only 1:13 into the final period, Chris Clark getting the goal off a fortuitous feed from White.
"The power-play goal, that third goal, was key," Tomassoni said. "We did a pretty good job defending it, but it goes off our player, we block the shot and it richochets right onto their stick. They get the bounce, we don't get the bounce."
Harvard gave itself a chance to get something out of the game with 2:47 to go, as Allman scored his second of the night on a tip from a sharp-angle Halfnight shot. But Jean-Francois Houle flipped in an open-net goal with only a minute to go, spoiling the Crimson's late hopes for a victory.
With this loss, tonight's game against St. Lawrence becomes even more important in the topsy-turvy ECAC race.
"[The St. Lawrence game] is huge," Halfnight said. "As we get down to the wire, [the games] just get bigger and bigger. On the one hand, that puts pressure on us, but on the other hand I don't think that we would want it any other way. We want to be in the fight till the end."
"We've just had to weather a lot of vicissitudes throughout the year trying to achieve a consistent level of execution," Allman said. "Come playoffs, I hope that we'll get it."
For the first time ever, Harvard left Cheel Arena with a definitive loss. Perhaps the fear that the Crimson lacked coming in could have helped its cause. Clarkson 1 1 2 - 4 Harvard 1 0 1 - 2 First Period CU-Ricci 2 (Windsor, Milvihill) 15:50. HU-Allman 5 (Halfnight) 19:16. Second Period CU-Grant 5 (Milvihill, Bushaw) 4:56. Third Period Read more in Sports
