Yale’s season-long dominance of the Harvard men’s hockey team continued on Friday night—but only for 18 minutes and 16 seconds.

From that point on, the Crimson took over, with captain Dylan Reese’s natural hat trick erasing an early two-goal deficit en route to a 5-2 Harvard victory at Bright Hockey Center in the first game of the best-of-three ECAC playoff series.

“Revenge was definitely a big part of this,” Reese said. “They beat us twice handily, and they’re one of our archrivals.”

The tenth-seeded Bulldogs entered the contest without top scorers Sean Backman and Mark Arcobello, who were absent from the lineup for undisclosed reasons.

However, despite the loss of offensive personnel, Yale had no trouble finding the back of the net in the game’s first frame.

The Bulldogs’ Chris Cahill opened the scoring on the power play at 7:26, bouncing a shot from behind the goal line off of senior goaltender Justin Tobe’s leg. Robert Page extended Yale’s lead to 2-0 at 18:16, beating Tobe with a long-range shot from the right point.

“I think maybe in the first period we kind of took a little bit of a wait-and-see attitude,” Donato said, citing the missing Bulldog stars as a possible psychological handicap. “I think they dictated the play a little bit more than we did in the first period.”

Once the game entered the second frame, however, it belonged to the Crimson—and specifically to Reese, who capitalized on a series of Bulldog penalties to net three consecutive power-play goals.

“We wanted to use our speed and establish our forecheck and put them in a position where we were going to get scoring chances or they were going to take penalties,” Donato said. “As the game wore on, we were able to do that.”

The first of Reese’s scores came 6:41 into the second period, when he snuck a low shot from the blue line past Yale goaltender Alec Richards to pull Harvard within one.

“We did a good job getting pucks to the net and getting people in front of the goalie,” Donato said of his team’s effort on the power play. “We got some deflections and some good bounces, but a lot of it was getting good traffic and putting the puck to the net.”

The Crimson employed similar tactics to tie the score at 14:05, with Reese connecting through traffic from the blue line for a second time, with help from Du and junior Jon Pelle.

A flurry of penalties at the end of the period opened the door for Harvard to take the lead. Yale went on the power play when sophomore Jack Christian was whistled for cross-checking at 19:33, but the advantage quickly shifted the other way when the Bulldogs’ Page and Brad Mills were called for slashing and interference, respectively, as the final horn sounded.

“We were guilty of [taking] too many penalties early, and then the game kind of shifted in the second and third,” Reese said. “You saw them taking more penalties, and that’s what ended up killing them in the end.”

Capitalizing on a 4-on-3 early in the third, Reese hit paydirt from the blue line for the third time, finding a gap between the right post and Richards’ left pad for a 3-2 advantage.

After finishing off his first career hat trick, Reese was done scoring for the night—but his team was not. 5:34 into the period, sophomore Brian McCafferty sent a pass to freshman center Doug Rogers at the top of the left faceoff circle, who one-timed it past Richards’ pad for a 4-2 lead.

Junior forward Alex Meintel added a wraparound goal at 15:21 to seal the 5-2 victory, which left the Crimson needing just one more victory in the two remaining games to advance in the ECAC playoffs.

“We’re excited,” Donato said of the victory. “But only half the job’s done.”

—Staff writer Daniel J. Rubin-Wills can be reached at drubin@fas.harvard.edu.