While neither the Saints nor the Knights are spectacular teams, they both are capable of beating Harvard if it doesn’t put in the same kind of effort it did against BU. In the wake of the weekend split with Princeton and Yale, Mazzoleni said his team needs a “lunch-pail type effort” and failing to have that made the Crimson not only “an average team” but also “very beatable.”

Having turned in a workman-like win over a Top 15 team, a non-conference opponent and a cross-town rival all at once, late November could be the beginning of a very interesting stretch of Harvard hockey.

“It’s a start tonight,” said Mazzoleni, about his team’s biggest regular season win in his tenure. “It’s a start.”

That it is. A start. A step in the right direction. And, hopefully, a beginning.

—Staff writer Timothy M. McDonald can be reached at tmcdonal@fas.harvard.edu.