BOSTON—The No. 9 Harvard men’s hockey team might have been playing the Beanpot’s consolation round last night at the FleetCenter, but the matchup with No. 2 Boston College could not have been more crucial, nor could the 4-1 loss at the hands of the Eagles have been more disheartening.

As teams nationwide jockey for position for an at-large NCAA Tournament berth, every game is of increased importance—and none presented the Crimson (15-7-2, 12-4-1 ECAC) a greater opportunity than last night’s, against the top team in the nation.

But if you’d watched Harvard play, you’d have agreed with its captain, Noah Welch, when he later said, “I don’t think guys wanted it that much tonight.”

It’s hard to explain why, exactly.

“We understood it was an important game,” said Crimson coach Ted Donato ’91. “I don’t think, in general, any group has to get up to play the No. 1 team in the country.”

But from the first drop of the puck, Harvard was one step behind, one step slower.

“I think [the Eagles] were able to get the game headed in the direction that they wanted to play,” Donato said, “and not necessarily that we wanted to play.”

And while it’s hard to say that the Crimson lost the game in the first period, it’s certainly difficult to say the team made any strides towards winning it, either.

Despite playing four of the first 10 minutes on the penalty kill, the Eagles (19-4-5, 12-1-5 Hockey East) outshot Harvard 15-7 in the first period, employing a balanced attack that kept goaltender Dov Grumet-Morris on his toes from the start.

The Crimson, meanwhile, struggled in the first frame, mustering only three power-play shots and giving up more than one quality chance to an aggressive BC defense.

The initial frame finished scoreless—but if first-period efforts didn’t help the cause, Harvard’s second-frame performance all but destroyed it.

Eagles center Ned Havern struck for a power-play tally just 1:15 into the middle period.

Grumet-Morris had left the goal, looking to clear the puck, but by the time he had made it back between the pipes he was too late to stop Havern’s deflection.

Exactly three minutes later, freshman Dan Bertram doubled the Eagles lead when he capitalized on an awkward carom off the corner of the boards that left the puck dangling dangerously, just feet from a defenseless Grumet-Morris.

“You can’t do anything about that,” said the netminder, the victim of a similarly fluky goal in last year’s consolation matchup, when the puck bounced off the glass, off his back, and into the goal.

“The way you respond to a goal like that is to come out with more intensity, throw the puck until you get shots, and change the momentum of the game—and unfortunately, we didn’t do that.”

At 11:22, freshman Mike Taylor was whistled for checking from behind, and from then until the second intermission, the Crimson skated just 158 even-strength seconds.

For a different Harvard squad that had been carrying play forward, the string of penalties might have only slowed the action—but for a Harvard squad that was already only standing still, the string of penalties spelled the end.

BC struck once more when Stephen Gionta tipped in a left-circle blast on the man-advantage, and the Crimson looked utterly confused.

It took just three shots in the second period, all of which came after the 10-minute mark and none of which was even within the faceoff circles.

“We got outshot 18-3 in the second period,” Grumet-Morris remarked, “and that’s the entire story of the game.”

It was only at 17:29, when Eagles goaltender Cory Schneider caught his skate on the ice and twisted his knee, that the Crimson was granted any sort of reprieve.

In skated Matti Kaltiainen, the netminder whom Harvard had torched for three power-play goals in November for a 3-1 win.

And Harvard did, indeed, enter the final frame with signs of life, notching its first and only goal at 6:01 when a Tom Walsh slapshot hit the post, bounced off Kaltiainen, and trickled over the line, just beyond the netminder’s reach.

But any sort of Crimson energy the score might have generated was quickly quashed less than three minutes later.

Sophomore Ryan Maki was held as he carried the puck towards the net, and an official’s hand shot up for the delayed penalty.

Now, with a goal in hand and something resembling momentum, Harvard was in line for a power play.

But after the whistle had stopped play, a fight broke out, and Maki and teammate Steve Mandes were assessed three penalties between them—three penalties that cancelled out BC’s three penalties and left the game at five-on-five.

“I think it was potentially a big point in the game,” Donato said. “I thought the momentum had turned a little bit, and we were set to go on a second power play with a decent amount of time left.”

Instead, the game continued at even-strength, with no great Harvard comeback in sight.

The Crimson saw its last, best chance with less than a minute remaining, when Grumet-Morris had been pulled for an extra skater. But as it had all night, the puck merely floated through the BC crease with nobody on the other side to tap it in.

Harvard took 14 shots in the final frame—four more than it had in the first two combined—but the Eagles defense never lost a step.

An empty-netter with 15 second remaining pushed the score to 4-1, and BC ended the night with 42 shots to Harvard’s 24.

“I don’t always agree that the shot total [can be used] to describe who is winning or losing,” Donato later said, “but certainly, when it’s that wide a margin, there’s got to be some reason for it. I thought they outplayed us for the majority of the game.”

And that might well prove costly as the Crimson’s regular season draws to a close.

—Staff writer Rebecca A. Seesel can be reached at seesel@fas.harvard.edu.