“Dov is a great, great goaltender,” said Big Green coach Bob Gaudet, “and we’ve had the toughest time scoring at all on him. He just makes things look easy.”
And so 16:27 into the final frame, when Mike Ouellette finally put the home team on the board, the 4,325 fans stuffed into seats and loitering throughout the concourse had reason to celebrate.
“They got some opportunities off the faceoff in our zone,” explained Grumet-Morris. “[They] put the puck on the net, maybe a lucky bounce for them, and they got it to [Ouellette], who was hanging out on the [right] side. He put it in, and he did a good job.”
Just three and a half minutes remained, and Dartmouth seemed in no danger of folding.
Harvard took a time out at 18:43 and returned to the ice with an extra skater, while Grumet-Morris watched from the bench. Cavanagh won the draw, and Bernakevitch took a crack at it, but the puck couldn’t clear traffic.
Sophomore forward Ryan Maki, though, pushed the puck high past Dartmouth netminder Dan Yacey and silenced the crowd.
Nobody had forgotten the two teams’ last meeting, some three weeks ago, when the Crimson broke a 1-1 tie with 58 seconds remaining on the clock and took the 2-1 victory.
“We had a set play [after the timeout],” Donato said. “I’m not going to lie and say it was exactly like that, but the end result was what we were trying to get.”
And so regulation play ended with the Crimson in control, and a stunned Dartmouth squad had to fend off a growing Harvard attack in overtime.
Ultimately, though, the Big Green tallied the sudden-death strike, with 31.2 seconds remaining in overtime.
Again it was Ouellette. Again the junior was planted in front of the right post. And again he shot a puck last touched by captain Lee Stempniak. The second goal was not off a rebound, however, but a pretty centering pass from the left wall that Ouellette lifted top-shelf.
“Ouellette made a heck of a play on the goal,” Donato admitted. “We had pretty good coverage, and there’s not much you can do.”
Dartmouth had capitalized on one chance, while the Crimson had not on several—including a quick cross-crease pass from Mike Taylor that Charlie Johnson couldn’t quite flip past Yacey—causing Donato to say, “As a coach, I knew that we could play very well and not win, and I think that’s what happened. I thought we played very well, but so did they, and they were able to make a play at the end. We had our chances, but I give Dartmouth all the credit.”
—Staff writer Rebecca A. Seesel can be reached at seesel@fas.harvard.edu.