HAMILTON, N.Y.—The Harvard men’s hockey team traveled to central New York this weekend with a chance at first place in the ECAC standings.

Unfortunately for the Crimson (9-8-3, 8-5-2 ECAC), it was stuck in first gear the whole time.

Harvard dropped both games, losing to Cornell 6-3 on Friday night before coming up short Saturday against Colgate, 5-3. It was the first ECAC weekend sweep of the Crimson in nearly two years.

And while Harvard Coach Mark Mazzoleni wasn’t about to make excuses for his team’s play, it was hard for him to deny the effects of the Crimson’s recent exam break. The three-week stretch kept Harvard idle while every other league team save for Princeton continued playing.

“We were playing with a very good tempo going into the finals break, but when you sit for 10 days while other teams are playing, it’s tough,” Mazzoleni said. “We don’t have the same energy, execution, focus, rhythm and flow that we did before finals. We were flat-footed.”

Harvard, who only mustered 36 shots on goal over the two games, now finds itself in a three-way tie for second place with Clarkson and Dartmouth. The Crimson sits five points behind league-leading Cornell (15-5-1, 11-2-1) and three ahead of fifth-place Colgate (9-13-1, 7-6-1).

Colgate 5, Harvard 3

Colgate scored back-to-back goals in the second period, snapping a 2-2 tie and lifting the Raiders to a 5-3 win Saturday.

Harvard had trouble putting the puck on net all game long and finished with only 16 shots on goal. The Crimson, in fact, did not force Colgate goaltender David Cann into making a third-period save until only 3:30 remained.

“We know Colgate does a very, very good job of fronting the puck and blocking shots, but we did a very poor job of getting the puck through traffic,” Mazzoleni said. “We have to open up our own shooting lanes.”

Trailing 2-1 in the second period, the Crimson stormed back to tie the game on senior captain Peter Capouch’s blast from the slot, which found its way through traffic and past Cann—last week’s ECAC Goaltender of the Week—at 1:33 of the frame.

However, Colgate—now 6-2-1 over its last nine games—responded with goals from forwards Kyle Doyle and Dmitry Yashin over the next five minutes to take a two-goal advantage it would never relinquish.

After the fourth Raider goal at 13:28 of the second period, Mazzoleni called timeout hoping to change the game’s momentum.

“When things aren’t going [well], you just can’t stay with the status quo,” Mazzoleni said. “You’ve got to try to change things to get a spark. Something as small as a line change can have an effect on it.”

Mazzoleni also tried juggling Harvard’s lines a bit, deploying some new combinations that he might use in tonight’s Beanpot opener.