Less than 90 seconds into overtime, it was over.

Said Harvard coach Mark Mazzoleni: “This is a tough loss to take.”

It was especially so because of the Crimson heroics it spoiled. Had the Harvard lead held up, everyone would be talking about the grit of Kolarik, who won the title game in double overtime last season while playing with a broken thumb and was a last-minute addition to the lineup after missing all or part of the last five games with two different injuries.

Kolarik was hockey’s equivalent of Kirk Gibson, getting one last good swing out of an ailing body to give Harvard its first lead with 3:46 left in the game.

But even before Kolarik there was Dominic Moore, arguably the best player on the ice against the Big Red—or in any ECAC game this season, with all due respect to ECAC Co-Players of the Year LeNeveu and Chris Higgins of Yale.

Moore worked tirelessly throughout, finding both time and space when there was little of either to be had against the stifling Cornell defense. At last, Moore was rewarded at 8:04 of the third period, when he picked Mark McRae’s pocket clean, spun in the slot and beat LeNeveu to tie the game 1-1.

This, though, was not the night for this Harvard hockey team to pen a new chapter in its hallowed history book. There would be no back-to-back championships, no players tripping over one another in a spontaneous embrace after the game winner and no assistant coaches sliding onto the ice, off-balance, to greet their victorious team.

This time it was some other scraggly-faced team, wearing a different shade of carmine, that had reason to celebrate.