Getting a monkey off your back never took so long. But for the Harvard men’s hockey team, it was well worth the wait.

After closing out the regular season by losing eight of its final 11 games, the Crimson (13-14-4, 10-9-3 ECAC) swept Brown in its best-of-three, first-round series of the ECAC playoffs this weekend. It certainly wasn’t easy for the Crimson, though—Harvard needed a full 94 minutes and 41 seconds to beat the Bears, 2-1, in Game 2 Saturday night.

It was the longest game in Harvard hockey history, and it ended at 14:41 of the second overtime period—four hours after it began—when junior center Dominic Moore did the near-impossible and solved Brown sophomore goaltender Yann Danis. Danis had stopped 66 Crimson shots on the night, an all-time Harvard record by an opposing goaltender.

Coupled with Friday night’s 4-1 Crimson win, the Game 2 thriller earned Harvard a berth in the ECAC Final Five at Lake Placid, N.Y. next weekend. The Crimson will face Clarkson in Friday’s 4 p.m. semifinal game.

All of a sudden, Harvard’s regular season woes are a distant memory.

“I couldn’t be prouder of our kids,” said Harvard Coach Mark Mazzoleni, whose team won two straight games for the first time since Jan. 4-5. “We did what we had to do. We deserve to go to Lake Placid the way we played this weekend. It was a major step forward for us.”

Harvard 2, Brown 1 (2OT)

Simply put, Saturday night’s game was an instant college hockey classic. And to top it off, Harvard’s most electrifying player came up with the team’s biggest goal of the season.

With the Crimson clearly dominating play but seeing its shots turned away time and time again by Danis—a bona fide French-Canadian puck-stopping machine—Moore took matters into his own hands. But of course, it didn’t come easy.

Moore began his game-winning sequence with a shot from the slot that Danis turned aside. Moore chased down his rebound to Danis’ left before picking the puck up and wrapping around the net counterclockwise.

Moore then popped back out in front of the goal and tried to backhand a shot by Danis, but was denied again. Just as he had done the first time, though, Moore pounced on the rebound, setting the stage for one last circle around the net.

“Well, it was déjà vu all over again on that second time around,” Moore said with a smile after the game. “I rolled out again, and that time I decided that I wasn’t going to get stopped.”

Moore was right. This time, Danis didn’t put a pad on Moore’s shot and it slipped by him along the ice on his glove side.

“I made two loops—one for each overtime,” Moore joked after the game. “Luckily it went in and we were done with it.”

As the red light went on in front of the Harvard student section—which had migrated from its usual location underneath the Bright Center press box before the second overtime in order to have a prime view of the anticipated game-winner—a mass celebration ensued.