“I thought we had some good movement on it,” Mazzoleni said. “I mean, you look at them, they had three and they scored two goals on it. That’s kind of where we’re at. That’s why we’re like a .795 penalty kill and 12 [now 13.5] percent on our power play. We’re not getting it done.”

Against Colgate on Saturday, the Crimson drew only two penalties and couldn’t convert on either power play.

But Harvard thrived against the Raiders’ power play, killing five penalties with ease compared to the labors of the previous night. The Crimson excelled at accomplishing what it did equally well at even strength: pushing Colgate out away from the goal and forcing long, inaccurate shots.

The Raiders hit the net just twice with the man advantage.

Mazzoleni didn’t appear to be bothered by the penalties his team took, either.

“Danny Murphy calls a different game than [Friday’s official] Timmy Kotyra,” Mazzoleni said. “Timmy let a lot go last night and Danny calls a tight game.”

Conference Call

At this point, preseason pundits thought Harvard would be fighting for a spot in the NCAA tournament. Instead, the Crimson’s 8-9-2 overall record has all but ended its chances at an at-large NCAA bid, and the team has only an outside chance at a first-round bye in the ECAC playoffs, awarded to the league’s top four teams.

Harvard enters the exam break in a tie for third place in the ECAC at 6-7-1 (13 points). However, it has played 14 conference games this season—the most in the league—and several schools (front-runners Cornell and Dartmouth included) have only played eight.

In other words, winning percentage is a better indication of where the Crimson truly stands. By that measure, Harvard is eighth at .464. If it continues on that pace, it will likely finish with around 20 or 21 points and a record on the order of 9-11-2.

In most ECAC seasons, that is good enough for about seventh place, meaning the Crimson would miss a first-round bye and need to win two best-of-three series—one of them on the road—to make the ECAC Final Four.

The Crimson’s best-case scenario would be to end the conference season with eight straight wins to finish 14-7-1. That would give Harvard 29 points and possibly a first-round bye.

If Harvard fares very well in its last eight games, but is less than perfect—5-2-1, for example—then it finishes with 24 points, which would likely mean fifth or sixth place.

—Staff writer Jon Paul Morosi can be reached at morosi@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Timothy J. McGinn can be reached at mcginn@fas.harvard.edu.