SCHENECTADY, N.Y--Good weekend. Missed opportunity

Union erased a 2-1 third-period deficit with two goals, 24 seconds apart to pull off a stunning upset of the Crimson at Achilles Rink on Saturday night. The loss spoiled a chance for a Crimson weekend sweep after a magnificent, 27 save performance by senior goaltender Oli Jonas in blanking high powered Rensselaer, 1-0 Friday night.

The failure to defeat the Skating Dutchmen also meant the Harvard lost the opportunity to claim sole possession of third place in the ECAC. The Crimson is currently tied with Cornell at 23 points, but the Big Red holds the tiebreaker meaning Harvard will need to win and get some help from these very same Engineers and Dutchmen next weekend to finish in the top three of the ECAC.

Still, defeating RPI meant a virtual clinch of a top-five finish for the Crimson and home ice for the first round of the playoffs. Harvard is now ahead of the Engineers by three points with two games remaining. A tie will send round one to Bright fro the first time since 1997-98. But third place is important because it will mean avoiding the Thursday play-in game should Harvard win its first round series and advance to Lake Placid.

"We are right where we want to be in the standings," Harvard Coach Mark Mazzoleni said. "But we are going to have to give it a much better effort next weekend than we did this weekend."

Union 3, Harvard 2

Harvard was in a position to win this game, but it had to credit luck more than itself for that honor, and by the end of the game the better team for the night had won.

Union, tied for the last playoff spot entering the night , played a classic desperate hockey game and dictated the flow of the contest from the opening draw. Keeping three men back on defense at almost all times, the Skating Dutchmen successfully slowed the game to a crawl, holding the Crimson to just 21--mostly weak--shots on goal and almost no offensive flow.

"They were better man-to-man and they had two men on all the loose pucks," Mazzoleni said. "They kicked our ass all over the ice."

Still Harvard managed a goal in the first and second periods and held a one-goal lead entering the third. In its previous two games, the Crimson had successfully defended one-goal third period leads. But not Saturday night.

On a sequence where Jonas was bombarded repeatedly with rebound shot after shot, the puck bounced out to the slot to the stick of Randy Dagenias, who wristed a shot through a screen high over Jonas' blocker at 7:16

Just 24 seconds later, senior Jason Ralph corralled the puck along the boards between the right faceoff circle hash marks and let go an apparently harmless shot that found its way inside the far post to turn a slow cruise to victory for the Crimson into a stunning lead for Union.

From there, the Skating Dutchmen were content to sit back on the lead and continually clear the zone, icing the puck if necessary, and let the clock wind down.

"This was the best 60 minutes of hockey we have played all year," Union Coach Kevin Sneddon '92 said.

Harvard opened the scoring at 17:43 of the first period on the power play. Freshman winger Kenny Turano made a diving save to nudge the puck to freshman defenseman Dave McCulloch at the center point. McCulloch fluttered a shot that found its way through traffic past Union goalie Brandon Snee. It was the rookie's first goal of his Harvard career.

Though Harvard scored on the power play, its play with the man advantage during the game was close to abysmal. Overall, the Crimson went 1-for-5 which included a five-on-three advantage in the second period. Even McCulloch's goal came off a broken play, not something Mazzoleni drew up before the game.

"Our power play has been struggling lately," freshman winger Tim Pettit said. "We had a streak in January where they were going in left and right, but now nothing has meshed."

Union countered with a power play goal of its own at 2:50 of the second period. Pettit gave Harvard its chance to win the game with his twelfth goal of the season, a deflection off a point shot by junior defenseman Aaron Kim.

The goal tied Pettit with Clarkson's Rob McFeeters for the top point total among all ECAC rookies.

Jonas made 32 saves for the Crimson in the contest, while Snee turned aside 19.

Harvard 1, RPI 0

Friday night, the Crimson welcomed back sophomore winger Brett Nowak to the lineup. He was sure to remind everyone how much he was missed.

Nowak took a drop pass from senior linemate Harry Schwefel and skated to the right faceoff circle and let go a wristshot that managed to allude the Engineer's star rookie netminder Nathan Marsters. Jonas made that one goal stand up with 27 saves, a number that underreports the amount of action around his net during the contest.

"We'll take that win any day," Jonas said. "We needed that win. I think that it means that we'll have home ice. We're all very excited."

The Engineers received a golden chance to tie up the game when at 19:02 McCulloch got whistled for a questionable hooking call that put the Crimson down two men for all but the last 13 seconds of the game. Kim took a tripping minor at 17:47. Not only was Harvard at a five-one-three disadvantage, which became six-on-three with Marsters pulled, but two of Harvard's best defensemen were in the box.

The Crimson sent out captain Steve Moore, junior assistant captain Pete Capouch and freshman defenseman Kenny Smith to kill the penalty and secure the win and the trio delivered. The Engineers could not get Harvard's triangle shifting, forcing the shots to come from the outside, many of which went wide. When Capouch blocked a point shot that Moore cleared with about 15 seconds left in the game, the contest was over.

"I thought on the sic-on-three they were kinda like us--neither team showed any poise setting the puck up and really getting it moving and then trying to attack the triangle," Mazzoleni said. "For scoring, it was one pass and a hammer instead of getting it moving a bit."

The final rash of penalties was part of a game bizarrely officiated by Dan Murphy. He called ten minors in the third period, after only nine combined through the first two periods. Through most of the period, the Crimson was the beneficiary of Murphy's desire to see specialty teams action awarding Harvard two five-one-three advantages of its own.

Harvard could not score, nor really even set much up overall on the eight total power plays it had on the contest.

In fact, the Engineers' best chance to even the game besides the final flurry, was a breakaway by Jim Henkel during one of those Crimson five-on-threes. Henkel darted in from the right wing on Jonas, made a gorgeous move across the crease, but Jonas had dragged his stick along the ice as he slid down and made a Hasek-like stop to keep the Engineers scoreless.

"Oh my goodness, Jonas made quite the save on that one," RPI Coach Dan Fridgen said. "Down an out, threw down the cross, and it caught his arm. Talk about snake-bitten. What else can I say?"

Jonas' standout performance earned him the number one star of the game and his second shutout of the season, the first coming on opening day against Brown. It was Harvard's first sweep of RPI since 1995-96.

Marsters made 33 saves in a tough loss where he gave up just one goal.

The 1-0 win in Houston Field House was a bit of revenge for the Crimson.

Harvard needed to defeat the Engineers at Bright on the last game of the regular season last year to secure home ice for the playoffs, but Hobey

Baker candidate Joel Laing made over 40 saves and stole for his team a 2-0

win. Laing's heroics sent Harvard packing to Cornell's Lynah Rink where it promptly got swept.