As Princeton’s Mark Magnowski slotted an empty-netter with less than two minutes remaining in the ECAC championship game, he may as well have been slamming his stick in the collective gut of the Harvard men’s hockey team.

With a 4-1 victory over the No. 16 Crimson (17-14-4) on March 22 at the Times Union Center in Albany, N.Y., the No. 15 Tigers (22-13-0) ended Harvard’s season and extended their own, clinching the ECAC tournament title and the accompanying NCAA bid.

While Princeton lost 5-1 to No. 1 seed North Dakota in the Midwest region in the first round, the Crimson spent a second consecutive spring break without any NCAA hockey to look forward to.

“We didn’t finish it off exactly the way we wanted to,” Harvard coach Ted Donato ’91 said in a post-game press conference. “But from a coaching standpoint, I couldn’t be prouder of the way we performed.”

The loss to the Tigers left Harvard in 15th place in USCHO.com’s PairWise Rankings (PWR), a system based on a formula that attempts to mimic the logic of the NCAA selection committee.

With at least two of the 16 NCAA berths to be awarded to teams outside the PWR’s top 25, the Crimson was unlikely to receive an at-large bid and needed to win to get into the Tournament.

Ironically, the absence of Clarkson from the ECAC Final Four may have hurt Harvard more than it helped. Though the Crimson must have been happy to avoid facing a team that ended its season last year and swept the season series 2-0 this year, the Golden Knights squeezed the NCAA bubble by claiming an at-large berth after tumbling from the ECAC playoffs.

On March 22, however, there was one man responsible for Harvard’s fate: Princeton goaltender Zane Kalemba. The netminder finished with 34 saves and was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player for his effort.

“He’s not the biggest guy in the world, but he works hard and he never gives up on a rebound,” said senior forward Jon Pelle, who joined Kalemba on the All-Tournament Team along with teammate Alex Biega.

Kalemba kept the Crimson offense at bay for two periods, putting up 25 saves to preserve a shutout through the second intermission. The Tigers, on the other hand, got on the board early, with Mike Moore netting a goal just 5:04 into the game.

Harvard goaltender Kyle Richter did his part, registering 13 stops of his own in the opening frame. But the Princeton attack continued to press, and Moore helped set up Landis Stankievech for the 2-0 lead at 12:34 of the second period.

The Crimson came out inspired in the final period.

Skating 4-on-3 with sophomore Doug Rogers and the Tigers’ Kevin Crane and Taylor Fedun in the penalty box, Harvard cut Princeton’s lead in half just 24 seconds into the frame, with Pelle scoring off a pass from co-captain Mike Taylor.

But the Crimson would get no closer. Harvard hampered its own chances by taking two penalties in the period—co-captain David MacDonald at 3:02 and Biega at 16:13. Both infractions stemmed the Crimson’s attack, but the latter proved more damaging, as Brett Wilson tallied a man-advantage score to give the Tigers a two-goal cushion with just over three minutes remaining.

Kalemba stopped the other 10 shots that came his way in the third period. By the time Magnowski slid the puck into the empty Harvard net at 18:22, Princeton’s celebrations had begun in earnest

“They played very well and made some plays from the net on out,” Donato said. “We were not able to penetrate and get enough dangerous shots.”

After the second-place finish, the Crimson’s senior class will graduate having missed the NCAA Tournament for two consecutive years despite having appeared in the ECAC championship game in three of the past four years. The Crimson won the ECAC tournament in 2006 before falling in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

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