TROY, N.Y.—When Jake Morissette fired the eventual game-winner past Harvard goaltender John Daigneau with one second remaining on a Crimson bench minor, the rowdy Rensselaer crowd started chanting.

“It’s all your fault!”

“It’s all your fault!”

“It’s all your fault!”

But for once, the Engineers’ fans weren’t pointing at the netminder. They were gesturing towards Harvard coach Ted Donato ’91.

Sure, the skipper had been responsible for RPI’s power play, mouthing off to the referee after junior defenseman Dylan Reese’s tally was denied because the net was off its moorings. And yes, Morissette’s score would withstand the Crimson’s late two-goal rally to hold up as the difference in a 3-2 game. Donato himself acknowledged his culpability, apologizing to his players after the game.

But that bench minor—and another one assessed at the game’s conclusion—is indicative of much deeper problems for a Harvard squad that finds itself just above .500 in the ECAC.

Through the first month of the season, the Crimson would build up early leads and allow late goals, a trend that was disturbing but, for the most part, not damaging to Harvard’s record. But more recently, the Crimson has found itself facing another type of dilemma—the inability to get going in the first 40 minutes.

“I don’t know how many times it’s happened to us, but the first two periods, we kind of sleepwalked through [them],” captain Peter Hafner said after Saturday night’s game. “And then finally in the third period, when we’re down, we decide to play.”

This problem first manifested itself in Harvard’s Dec. 4 loss at then-last-place Yale, when the Bulldogs built up a 4-1 lead through 40 minutes before surrendering two late goals to escape with a 4-3 upset.

Then, on Dec. 16 in Hanover, N.H., Dartmouth built up a 3-0 lead on its way to an easy 5-1 victory over the same Crimson squad that defeated the Big Green 6-2 to kick off the season.

In both of those games, Harvard rallied late, showing flashes of brilliance that it has also displayed in out-of-conference wins over juggernauts such as Boston College, New Hampshire, and North Dakota. But the fact remained that the Crimson let itself be pushed around in the first two periods.

“This season, granted, we’ve done well not giving up in games, not just folding in the third period,” Hafner said. “But then again, why don’t we do that for the whole game?”

The weekend set further exposed Harvard’s weakness. At Union on Friday, the Crimson skated mildly through the first two periods, failing to score despite having four power-play opportunities. Only after the Dutchmen tallied a goal at 15:20 of the third period did Harvard awaken, equalizing 53 seconds later.

“From an X’s and O’s standpoint, I don’t feel like we need to get back to the drawing board,” said Crimson coach Ted Donato ’91 after the game. “I think we’ve just got to execute.”

The following night against the Engineers, Harvard “sleepwalked” through the first 40 minutes again, wasting four man-advantage opportunities and mustering only 15 shots on net while a middling RPI team built up a 2-0 cushion.

Then came Donato’s bench minor, Morissette’s goal, and the chanting by the crowd. And that’s what it seemed to take to rouse the Crimson from its slumber, as Harvard finished the third period with 17 shots and two late goals to its credit.

“If we had played like that the first 40 minutes, we wouldn’t have found ourselves in that position, and we would have won the game,” Donato said after the loss, adding later, “I think we have tremendous character in the [locker] room—I just would have hoped that we could have found it a little earlier.”

Though Harvard’s out-of-conference victories will certainly garner it favor with the NCAA selection committee in the spring, the Crimson will have to start playing better in the first 40 minutes—especially against weaker league foes—if it doesn’t want to rely on capturing the automatic bid given to the winner of the end-of-year ECAC tournament.

Otherwise, Harvard may find itself left out of the Big Dance for the first time in five years.

“As evidenced in that third period, we can dominate teams, we can be as good as anybody—it’s just a matter of getting that level of play for three periods,” Hafner said after the RPI game. “Hopefully, this [upcoming exam] break, this two-week break, it will sink in, and we’ll finally learn our lesson.”

—Staff writer Karan Lodha can be reached at klodha@fas.harvard.edu.