The Tigers squandered their power play, but the Crimson wasted an equally good scoring chance from the stick of Packard.

“If you can kill a penalty, especially a five-on-three, you can get some momentum out of that,” Crimson captain and defenseman Kenny Smith said. “We made a great play on the kill, but it just didn’t translate into any offense for us, unfortunately.”

A decisive swing of momentum accompanied the Crimson’s missed opportunity, and Princeton silenced the cheers of “Let’s go, Harvard,” with four goals in the last 13 minutes.

The Tigers’ first goal came from forward Kevin Westgarth, as he knocked in the puck after it slipped away on linemate Ian McNally’s charge to the net.

Westgarth beat Harvard sophomore goalie John Daigneau (16 saves) at 7:22.

“I thought that killing off [the five-on-three] was a big motivator, and I thought we’d only get stronger from there, but they just kept coming,” Daigneau said.

Princeton scored again 13:09 in, as Seamus Young took a pass directly off the faceoff and wristed it past Daigneau.

It was Tiger senior Sharam Fouladgar-Mercer, though, who clinched the game with less than five minutes remaining. The forward, who had compiled only 14 points in his entire collegiate career, drew Daigneau out of position and then flicked it five-hole.

“[Harvard] might have thought that they had us in the end,” Fouladgar-Mercer said. “But the [Princeton] guys just all came together.”

He added that the strong play of Leroux—who made 28 saves—drove the team.

The nail in the coffin came with less than half a minute remaining, as Mike Patton sent the puck across the ice and into an empty Harvard net, silencing the Crimson crowd.

“Personally, I feel like I need to win that game,” Daigneau said. “Or we as a team need to win that game.… [I] didn’t give the team what they needed tonight, for whatever reason.”

Mazzoleni explained the loss quite simply.

“You’ve got to get it done, and we didn’t get it done. Bottom line on it: I am very, very disappointed.”

He added that the team must “go back, watch the tape, make corrections and get this thing going.”