ALBANY, N.Y.—After four hours and four minutes of ECAC tournament semifinal hockey against Colgate on Friday, and after one period of Saturday’s final against Cornell, the No. 8 Harvard men’s hockey team finally ran out of gas.

Up 1-0 after a gritty first-frame effort, the Crimson (21-9-3, 15-5-2) surrendered two second-period goals in quick succession, giving the Big Red (26-4-3, 18-2-2) a lead it would hold until the clock wound down, the buzzer sounded, and the Whitelaw Trophy was wheeled out onto the ice.

“Do I think we played our best game? Not by a long shot,” said Harvard coach Ted Donato ’91 of his squad’s 3-1 loss. “But ultimately, you have to give Cornell a lot of credit. We were outplayed, [and] I think they deserved to win.”

Dylan Reese’s screened slapshot at 18:23 in the initial period gave the Crimson a first-frame lead, and Harvard enjoyed several good chances when Cornell’s Daniel Pegoraro was whistled for holding 7:21 into the middle period—the best of which came when Dan Murphy dished the puck from the right circle to the left corner of the crease, where a perfectly positioned Brendan Bernakevitch pushed it just wide.

“We were carrying the play,” Donato said. “We had some good puck control, some good chances on that power play.”

But there would be no reward for two dominating minutes of the man-advantage, and just as Pegoraro’s minor expired, Cornell’s Paul Varteressian blocked a Noah Welch blueline shot, sending the puck rolling towards the penalty box and the newly liberated Pegoraro.

“Pegoraro just jumped out of the box and picked it up,” Varteressian explained. “I was kind of out of gas, but [there are] not too many opportunities to take a two-on-one against a team like Harvard, so I jumped in there and just went as hard to the net as possible.”

Pegoraro carried the puck up the right side, hesitating at the blueline as Varteressian sprinted to make up ground. Welch, who believed a backchecking teammate would cover Varteressian, stayed with Pegoraro. Welch was wrong, though, and Pegoraro slipped the puck over to the slot, where a wide-open Varteressian one-timed a shot that trickled past Crimson netminder Dov Grumet-Morris at 9:35.

“I thought our backchecker was there, and I thought I actually turned it into a one-on-one,” Welch said. “I gave [Pegoraro] the pass across, which is not my job. I should let Dov take the shooter, so I take responsibility for that goal.”

“Dov almost had it,” Welch added. “He almost made a great save, but I can’t let the pass go by.”

The game was tied, and the Pepsi Arena, filled with a sea of the Cornell faithful, came to life.

“Their first goal killed us,” Donato said. “We were on the verge of getting a two-goal lead, the guy comes out of the box, and they end up with a two-on-one. It was a big momentum boost. From that point forward, they really took the play to us for the rest of the game.”

Just 27 seconds after the inauspicious goal, Crimson freshman Tyler Magura was called for hooking, giving the Big Red a power play of its own—a dangerous gift for a squad that boasted a 24.7 percent conversion rate entering the game.

And less than half a minute into the man-advantage, Cornell assistant captain Charlie Cook launched a blueline screamer at 10:30 that beat a screened Grumet-Morris top-shelf.

In the space of 55 seconds, the Big Red had taken a slim lead and a sizeable momentum advantage.