A glut of blown chances brought gasps from the crowd in the waning minutes of Friday night’s contest between the No. 10 Harvard men’s hockey team and Dartmouth, but it was Crimson sophomore Dylan Reese’s goal, with just 58 seconds remaining, that brought the 2,776 fans to their feet.

Harvard (14-5-2, 11-4-1 ECAC) had had no shortage of chances: less than five minutes remained in the fierce, 1-1 tie when sophomore Steve Mandes found himself in the slot, poised to knock the game-winner past Big Green goaltender Dan Yacey. The winger missed wide and left.

A minute later, freshman Dave Watters’ breakaway was smothered, and, shortly thereafter, his classmate Tyler Magura couldn’t convert a 2-on-1.

Then it was junior Charlie Johnson’s turn to be denied as he pressured Yacey, and following him was senior Andrew Lederman, who dislodged the net reaching for Johnson’s rebound.

The last few minutes of the Bright Hockey Center game were clearly the home team’s, and yet the score remained knotted.

But the key throughout the entire contest, according to Crimson coach Ted Donato ’91: “I think our guys persevered.”

And finally, Reese took a pass in the high slot and blasted it home, and Harvard went ahead for good.

“It really doesn’t matter who scores a goal like that,” said Reese, who now ranks fourth on his team with 12 points and leads the blueliners. “But it does feel good. To get a win like that, with one minute left, is great. Just a great feeling.”

And the Dartmouth skaters, who had easily controlled the early stages of the game, could only hang their heads.

The Big Green took the lead 12:35 in, when an unassisted Mike Ouellette beat Crimson goaltender Dov Grumet-Morris.

Ouellette had “tried to chip it into the middle,” Grumet-Morris later explained, “and it actually ended going off one of our skates or shinpads.”

But, the netminder added, “that was because of how hard they worked. They kept the puck in the zone and they did a very good job, and God knows we’ve gotten a few of those bounces over the course of the last five games, so they get credit for that goal. That wasn’t a mistake—that was a good job on their part.”

“We came out flat, and we knew it,” Reese said. “The first period, we just didn’t play our game.”

“I don’t know if we were looking ahead to [tonight’s] Beanpot or if guys just weren’t mentally prepared,” he added. “But it took us a period to get into this game, and you saw it in the first period. The power play wasn’t clicking, the forecheck wasn’t good, [and] defensive zone coverage wasn’t good.”

Somewhat uncharacteristically, Dartmouth earned four whistles in the opening frame, giving Harvard 4:49 of man-advantage play, 65 seconds of which were 5-on-3.

Yet the Big Green defense staved off every opportunity.

“I thought we worked incredibly hard,” Dartmouth coach Bob Gaudet said. “It was a two-minute 5-on-3, almost, and that’s a crucial part of the game.”

And though the Crimson came out “flat,” Donato added he’d “be crazy not to think Dartmouth had something to do with [it].”

“There were a lot of things that we did that we haven’t been doing,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s the fact that things have come a little bit easy over the last few games.”

Harvard had scored 20 times in its last three contests, but both sides of the Big Green game far surpassed those of the Crimson’s trio of previous opponents.

Friday night proved a test, one Harvard appeared doomed to fail until mid-way through the second period.

But propelled by a series of impressive defensive stands and a string of Dartmouth penalties, the Crimson finally converted on its power play, albeit due to a Big Green bench minor.

Junior Tom Walsh made a nifty move along the right boards, safeguarding the puck from a Big Dartmouth skater who dove to clear it up the ice. Walsh then fired to Johnson, who slapped it towards Yacey from just within the blueline.

Though Johnson was initially credited with the score, it was later determined that the puck had glanced off the body of sophomore Ryan Maki, who ultimately earned the goal.

“Lucky enough,” Maki said, smiling. “It hit my body, hit my shin or whatever, and it went in. I didn’t have a lot to do with it other than that.”

“I wish I could say I redirected it into the net,” he laughed, “but I didn’t.”

Harvard had knotted the score 17:25 through the second frame, and, though the third seemed to fly by uninterrupted, the Crimson increased the pressure with five minutes remaining, producing a flurry of chances that ended with Reese’s screened game-winning goal.

“Wide-open, I was able to get the shot off quick before the guy could jump me,” Reese explained, acknowledging a seamless pass by his defensive partner, Ryan Lannon. “[There was] a good screen in front, the puck went through, and I don’t think [Yacey] saw it until the last second.”

The Big Green netminder was pulled for the final 47 seconds, but Harvard held on, giving its fourth straight home-sellout crowd reason to cheer after three periods of nail-biting play.

“Dartmouth is a very good team,” Grumet-Morris later reflected. “They came out ready to play, and they took it down to 59 minutes and two seconds.”

And, said Gaudet, “it’s just a bounce of the puck at the end.

“They make a nice play, and the puck has eyes. And it didn’t for us tonight.”

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