Even if the Harvard men’s hockey team (6-7-3, 5-4-2 ECAC) failed to earn a win in its two weekend games, the strong performance of the penalty killing unit kept the Crimson’s struggling offense, averaging 2.2 goals per contest, in close games.

This success came less than a week after Harvard’s special teams allowed three power-play goals in two games during the Ohio Hockey Classic.

The Crimson’s defense held Quinnipiac (11-5-3, 4-3-3) scoreless through all five of its power plays on Friday night and stifled Princeton three times on Saturday.

Despite playing a man down for 10 minutes against the Bobcats, the Harvard defense did most of the work for sophomore goalie Kyle Richter, as he only faced one shot from Quinnipiac in that time.

Before Friday night, the Bobcats had netted a total of 16 goals on 91 power-play chances and had averaged better than one shot per man advantage.

“Beyond staying out of the box, which would have been our best defense, I think we really wanted to limit the time they had to pick us apart,” said Crimson coach Ted Donato ’91. “I thought our penalty kill was exceptional and gave us a chance to get a point tonight.”

Even though Quinnipiac managed to exert some pressure in the offensive zone, Harvard kept up its forecheck in the neutral zone and forced the Bobcats into the corners and behind the net when they could penetrate the Crimson’s zone.

Against Princeton (8-8-0, 6-4-0), Richter played a more pivotal role in preventing Harvard’s four penalties from turning into power-play goals for the Tigers.

He stopped 10 Princeton shots during a four-minute power play in the second period, half of which the Crimson spent down two men.

“On the whole, the penalty kill was the best it’s looked in a while,” co-captain Dave MacDonald said. “That goes not only for Kyle but for the defense. That’s something we need to build on. On Friday night, we won the special-teams battle [for] the first time in a while.”

KILLER LAPSES

This weekend showed the Crimson just how quickly a game can change when a team loses focus for a few minutes or falls victim to bad luck. Often, if the defense fails to recover its mental edge after letting in a goal, it can snowball into a scoring streak for the opposition.

During Harvard’s haphazard start against Quinnipiac, the Bobcats struck twice within 53 seconds in the middle of the first period after Ben Nelson followed a Brian Leitch goal by stuffing a rebound past Richter.

“I think that we work too hard for goals to allow a few slip-ups to end in prime scoring opportunities,” MacDonald said.

Princeton also wrestled a 1-0 lead away from the Crimson in a span of five minutes in the third period on Saturday night. While the team acknowledges the need to maintain focus for the full 60 minutes, part of Princeton’s quick comeback was a fluky goal when the puck found a Tiger exiting the penalty box with a clear path to the goal.

“On Friday night, we played pretty well in the second two periods, but in the first, we allowed them too many good scoring chances,” MacDonald said. “On Friday, you could see we got deflated [following the two first period goals]. I don’t think we necessarily got deflated on Saturday, but it was more of an unlucky play.”

TWO-MINUTE MINORS

With the tie on Friday night, Harvard snapped a five-game losing streak...Sophomore defenseman Chad Morin and junior forward Jimmy Fraser each scored their first goal of the season this weekend...The Crimson suffered a mental breakdown against the Bobcats in the second period and took a penalty for too many men on the ice. The next night, Richter took a rare goalie penalty for high-sticking.

—Staff writer Robert T. Hamlin can be reached at rhamlin@fas.harvard.edu.