think they needed to maybe reassess the situation.”

He also called Harvard a team with “a level of skill…which I believe is profound.”

Even with such profound skill, the Crimson’s power play has barely eked out a 14.3 percent conversion rate this season.

“[A power play] is a collection of very hard work by five individuals coupled with their ability,” said Moore in explanation. “I would think that Harvard overall has an unbeatable power play.

“It’s the subtleties of how hard people work and how hard they work together that I try to impress upon my team.”

Moore’s Raiders are averaging 17.2 percent with the man advantage, but the team has capitalized on one of every four chances in the last month.

Mazzoleni’s take on the Crimson’s play is somewhat different.

“Our kids are trying,” he said. “We’ve tried. We’ve had games where we outshoot people and we don’t finish, or we outshoot and maybe we let in a soft goal or two, or we don’t get it done on specialty teams, but it hasn’t

been because we’ve come out and slacked.”

Harvard’s power play is currently 10th in the league (10-for-70, 14.3 percent). Last season, it led the ECAC with a 23.7 percent conversion rate (37-for-156).

The missing ingredient this year is twofold: forwards Dominic Moore and Brett Nowak, both ’03, were integral pieces in last year’s man advantage.

With the two forwards stacked on the right side of the rink and drawing the opposition, current senior forward Tim Pettit was left open across the ice, and his slapshot proved lethal.

“[Moore and Nowak] had the individual ability to generate goals by themselves without the team approach in it,” Mazzoleni said. “We weren’t a throw-it-at-the-net-from-all-angles [team]… other guys had secondary roles and responsibilities, and now our approach has to be a collective team [effort] to get to the net.”

Junior Noah Welch, who quarterbacks the Crimson’s top power play unit, agrees, adding, “We’ve got to kind of use all our weapons and not just stack one side of the ice.”

The blueliner also promised a new look for his power play unit today, the next in a chain of different formations the Crimson has tried thus far ranging from last year’s umbrella to a 2-3 and then back to the umbrella

again.

“Anytime you play Cornell, it’s a big game just because of the rivalry there,” said Welch, “but it’s also a big game for our team and our season. We really want to take this one, and we’re looking at it as a great opportunity...Hopefully this will be the game that puts us over the edge.”