On a tough weekend road trip to Yale and Princeton, the Harvard men’s hockey team stumbled mightily, dropping two games that could have solidified the Crimson’s position in the ECAC playoffs.

Still, by virtue of Dartmouth’s two losses this weekend, Harvard only lost ground in the league standings to Clarkson, which claimed the second playoff seed. The Crimson (11-14-4, 10-9-3 ECAC) finished in a tie for third with the Big Green, but by virtue of the head-to-head tiebreaker, the Crimson claimed the third playoff seed in the conference.

Harvard will face Brown on its home ice at Bright Hockey Center in a best-of-three series starting Friday.

“The hockey gods were with us and we still finished third even though we didn’t do anything to help ourselves ,” junior forward Dominic Moore said. “Hopefully, we can turn it on in the playoffs.”

Yale 4, Harvard 3

Yale (10-17-2, 9-11-2) came from behind to beat Harvard on Friday night, largely on the strength of forward Chris Higgins.

Higgins gathered an assist at 1:18 of the first period when Yale’s Vin Hellenmeyer redirected Higgins’ shot into the net for the first Bulldog goal.

Then, with Yale trailing 3-2 in the third period, Higgins fired a backhander past Harvard goalie Dov Grumet-Morris to tied the score at three with two and a half minutes left to play. Higgins would notch the game-winner as well, scoring a minute later on a quick shot that eluded Grumet-Morris.

It was Yale’s third lead of the game. With the Bulldogs ahead 1-0 after one period, Harvard sophomore Dennis Packard evened up the game less than a minute into the second period on a hard wrist shot from the right circle.

Yale’s Joe Callahan struck back to put the Elis up 2-1, an advantage they hoped to take into the third period. Junior forward Brett Nowak had other ideas, however, tallying the game-tying goal with three seconds left in the second period.

Nowak’s exciting last-second goal set the stage for the decisive final period.

Harvard pulled ahead of Yale with four minutes gone by, as sophomore forward Tim Pettit took advantage of Yale’s failure to clear the puck and potted a point-blank shot behind Yale goalie Dan Lombard.

Pettit’s goal set the score at 3-2 in Harvard’s favor, but that simply set the stage for Higgin’s heroics.

Princeton 3, Harvard 0

On Saturday night, old Crimson nemesis Dave Stathos stopped 36 shots for Princeton, shutting down the Crimson for first career shutout in his last-ever home game. The senior goalkeeper was the key element in the Tigers’ victory 2-1 over Harvard earlier this year, doing the same thing then that he did Saturday—stonewalling the Crimson.