HAMILTON, N.Y.—He cut right, deked left and lifted a shot to the upper right quarter of the goal.

The fans gasped with shock; their mouths fell open.

And with that breakaway move and laser shot, junior center Tom Cavanagh put the Harvard men’s hockey team ahead of Colgate for good Friday night.

Cavanagh’s goal, his second of the night, came 9:19 into the third and put the Crimson up 3-2. Harvard eventually won 4-2 on the strength of Cavanagh’s third goal.

It was his first collegiate hat trick.

“Yeah, [he] was OK,” junior goaltender Dov Grumet-Morris said jokingly. “No, he was fantastic. It’s pretty amazing that, in the third period, his strength and his wind were able to get us the game-winning goal.”

In typical fashion, Cavanagh was modest after the game and complemented senior winger Dennis Packard for feeding him the puck on his second goal.

“It was just one of those nights when I got some bounces,” Cavanagh said. “I just tried to get it to the net, and it worked out pretty well.”

But the fact that fans turned to each other asking who Cavanagh was after his breakaway speaks to the beauty of his goal.

Packard cleared the puck out of the zone and along the boards to Cavanagh. Racing along the right side on a two-on-three, Cavanagh crossed the blue line, then split the two defensemen with a quick move to the left.

Bearing down on Raiders goalie Steve Silverthorn, Cavanagh broke past Eamon Del Giacco and wristed the puck above Silverman’s stick.

“I’ve seen him pull that move a lot, where he fakes outside and comes inside,” Packard said. “It was a great move and a great finish, as well. He put it right on top.

No goalie’s going to save that.”

The goal looked just as pretty from the bench.

“I haven’t seen a goal like that for a long time,” junior center Brendan Bernakevitch said. “That was straight-up—got the [deke] and put it top-shelf. You can’t ask for a prettier goal.”