Junior defenseman Noah Welch checks Yale senior forward Vin Hellemeyer during Harvard's 7-5 win Friday night.

NEW HAVEN, Conn.—Welcome back, guys. It’s been a long, cold, unfulfilling winter without you.

If the Harvard men’s hockey team goes on to accomplish what the preseason pundits thought it would—win the ECAC tournament and earn a third straight NCAA tournament berth—the revival witnessed in New Haven on Friday night will surely be looked upon as the turning point.

The Crimson trailed archrival Yale (11-11-0, 9-6-0 ECAC) by four goals (4-0) after one period and three (5-2) after two, but staged a serendipitous rally in the third, scoring five times—including goals from Tyler Kolarik, Tim Pettit and the winner by Noah Welch in a 61-second span—to deliver a potentially luck-changing, season-making 7-5 win before a dumbfounded sellout of 3,486 at Ingalls Rink and national television audience on CSTV.

“Pretty unbelievable feat,” marveled Harvard junior goaltender Dov Grumet-Morris.

Unbelievable, as well as badly, badly needed. The Crimson had lost four of its last five, and appeared headed to new depths when four goals in seven minutes chased starting goaltender John Daigneau (10 saves on 14 shots) in favor of Grumet-Morris after one period. Harvard seemed, by all indications, to be in just-get-us-outta-here mode.

“I certainly was,” Kolarik said. “I’m not going to lie to you.”

But the Crimson outscored Yale in the second period, 2-1, and its effort grew into a crescendo during the final stanza as Harvard assembled the biggest third-period comeback of the Mark Mazzoleni era. The Crimson put a season-high 58 shots on goal, the most since it had 68 against Brown in the 2002 ECAC playoffs—and that game lasted two overtimes.

Twenty-eight of those shots came in the third period alone. To put that number in perspective, the Crimson has had fewer than 28 shots on goal in nine games this season, including 20 in last Monday’s forgettable Beanpot loss to Boston College that prompted widespread water-cooler ribbing of Harvard alums across Greater Boston.

Now, though, that’s ancient history. The Crimson stands 9-11-2 (7-8-1 ECAC) and is four points out of the final first-round bye in the ECAC tournament with six league games to play.

Maybe there really is something to that darkest-before-the-light stuff.

“This is the type of game that can push a team over the hump,” said Harvard captain Kenny Smith. “Hopefully this will be it for us.”

Smith, who began Friday’s game with a team-low minus-9 rating, started the surge. He was on the ice for three of Yale’s first-period goals, but made what Welch called “the play of the game” at 7:48 of the second. Smith gained possession at neutral ice, went into the Bulldog zone on a 1-on-2, and split the defenders with a snap shot from between the circles that eluded goaltender Josh Gartner. “That,” Welch said, “is why he’s our captain.”

“He inspired our team and really took charge out there,” Mazzoleni said of Smith. “He made a great shot. Kenny can really snap the puck. He has as hard a shot on the snap shot as anyone on the team.”

Smith’s goal, his second of the season, cut the Yale lead to 4-1 and, most importantly, gave his team something to rally around. Even after Nathan Murphy scored about six minutes later to restore the Bulldogs’ four-goal lead, the Crimson never slowed. Harvard outshot the Elis in the period, 19-5, and drew the deficit back to three (5-2) when Brendan Bernakevitch struck from between the circles at 17:03.

And in the third period, Harvard’s stars awoke from their respective dormancies, one by one, to complete the improbable comeback.