John Lennon once said, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

Change that first word to “hockey,” and you’ve summarized the Harvard men’s hockey team’s weekend series with Princeton and Yale.

Going into the two-game set, the Crimson (9-6-3, 8-3-2 ECAC) was riding a three-game winning streak and hadn’t lost an ECAC contest since dropping a 5-1 decision to Vermont more than two months ago.

Looking at its opponents—a combined 9-20-2 going in—Harvard seemed poised to run its already-impressive ECAC mark to 9-2-2 with a weekend sweep.

Unfortunately for the Crimson, it didn’t work out that way.

In other words, “hockey” happened to Harvard—specifically a 2-1 loss to the Tigers (6-13-0, 5-7-0 ECAC) on Friday night.

Is Harvard a better hockey team than Princeton? Absolutely. The Crimson dominated the game physically and finished with a 38-18 advantage in shots on goal.

In that respect, it was hard for the Crimson to be too disappointed. As Harvard Coach Mark Mazzoleni said after the game, when you run into a hot goaltender like Princeton’s Dave Stathos, there isn’t really much you can do about it.

“I thought our kids played very hard. We had our chances,” Mazzoleni said. “That’s hockey, though, when you run into a good goaltender. You run into games like this throughout the year.”

He then concluded with a shrug and the two words that best described the night: “It happens.”

The Princeton loss made the next game effectively Harvard’s biggest of the season thus far. With Yale (5-10-2, 5-5-2 ECAC) sitting in second place, the Crimson knew things wouldn’t be easy against its archrival—its 1-20-3 all-time record at Bright Hockey Center notwithstanding.

Harvard could simply not afford to be swept heading into the exam break, during which teams trailing the Crimson will be able to catch up while the Harvard players push pencils in Science Center B and Emerson 105.

The Elis, however, certainly didn’t make things easy, taking leads of 1-0 and 2-1 in the first and second periods, respectively. Yale goaltender Dan Lombard looked solid in the early going, and the Bulldogs’ free-skating, aggressive style limited Harvard to fewer scoring opportunities than it had the night before.

As it turned out, though, the Crimson didn’t need that many. The bounces that went Princeton’s way on Friday were Harvard’s this time.

In that sense, “hockey happened” again on Saturday. This time, though, it played to the Crimson’s favor.