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Lake Placid, here they come.
Behind a three-goal performance from its power-play unit, a 5-for-6 showing from its penalty kill, and five more points from its red-hot second line, the Harvard men’s hockey team is now one step closer to a conference championship.
Erasing a third-period deficit for the second consecutive night, the No. 2 Crimson (24-5-2, 16-4-2 ECAC) upended Yale by a 4-3 Saturday scoreline to complete a series sweep of the Bulldogs, cap an unbeaten season at home, and earn a spot in next weekend’s ECAC semifinals.
“It wasn’t pretty; it was a grind out there,” said Harvard coach Ted Donato ’91, who now has 200 career victories behind the Crimson bench. “[But] I think this time of year, we’re not concerned with style points.”
After scoring a third-period equalizer on Friday, senior Tyler Moy was at it again on Saturday, tying the game at three with 14:14 left in regulation. Fellow senior Sean Malone dished out his second assist of the night on the play, feeding Moy atop the crease, where the Nashville Predators prospect tapped in his 18th goal of the season—tied for a team-high.
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Less than a minute later, Yale senior Mike Doherty was sent to the box for hooking—a setback the Bulldogs didn’t need on a night where the nation’s fourth-best power-play unit was firing on all cylinders.
Just seven seconds into the Doherty penalty, Harvard made Yale (13-15-5, 7-11-4) pay. Freshman defenseman Adam Fox slipped a pass from the point to Alexander Kerfoot by the left post, and the co-captain threaded a pass through the crease—not unlike Malone’s a minute earlier—to Lewis-Zerter-Gossage. Sophomore goaltender Sam Tucker (32 saves) shifted his left pad over in time to make a stop, but the puck eventually snuck over the line, giving the Crimson a 4-3 edge with 13:24 to go.
“It certainly seems to be tough to stay out of the box when you come up here to play, that’s for sure,” said a disgruntled Yale coach Keith Allain, who voiced to the officials his discontent with a number of the 12 penalties that produced Harvard power plays in the series.
Nonetheless, for a Bulldog team that generated 29 shots on goal through the first two periods, 13:24 should have sounded like plenty of time to find an equalizer. But over that span, Harvard held Yale to just a single shot on goal, proving a high-powered offense is sometimes capable of serving as a team’s best defense.
“We found a way,” Donato said. “We kind of took over the game as the game went on both nights. I think our guys were gritty in the third and kind of just kept coming.”
Nonetheless, the Crimson couldn’t exactly coast to the finish line. Consecutive tripping penalties against freshman Nathan Krusko and Kerfoot with 6:22 and 3:51 to go, respectively, offered the Bulldogs ample time to tie the game from the man advantage.
Yale came inches from doing exactly that, as captain John Hayden’s rip from the point caught a piece of Merrick Madsen’s right post on the Bulldogs’ first power play of the period. But the puck stayed out, and the visitors wouldn’t get any closer.
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With the victory, Harvard’s winning streak now stands at 12 games. The win also closes the book on a 13-0-2 mark at the Bright-Landry Hockey Center this season—the Crimson's first unbeaten home campaign since 1994.
“I think that was kind of a badge of honor that they wanted to carry for the year,” Donato said.
In fact, Harvard trailed during the third period in just four of those 15 home games. But sure enough, three of them were against Yale. On this particular occasion, the Bulldogs built its lead thanks to second-period goals from Hayden and sophomore Andrew Gaus.
Atoning for a cross-checking penalty in the first period that led to a 1-1 equalizer for Luke Esposito, Hayden drew a hook against defenseman Wiley Sherman in the final minute of the opening frame that granted Yale its third power play of the period.
That man advantage would carry into the middle frame, and 1:02 into the stanza, Hayden reaped the rewards of his own efforts. The senior from Greenwich, Conn.—the same hometown as Esposito—knocked in a loose puck for his team-leading 21st goal of the year, tying the game at two.
Then with 1:33 remaining in the middle frame, Gaus followed with a top-shelf equalizer in the low slot to put the Bulldogs up 3-2, marking the night’s penultimate lead change.
“In the second period, I thought we didn’t do a great job getting shots out of all the zone time we had,” Donato said. “It felt like we had the puck in their zone a lot more than they did, but they were able to generate more shots than we did.”
Despite the zone time, the second period proved to be the only frame of the series in which Harvard did not score. Before being blanked in the second, however, the Crimson had scored twice in the first to open up a 2-1 lead.
After Doherty netted the game’s first goal just 1:03 into the contest, Esposito picked up his aforementioned power-play equalizer, knocking in a Malone feed on the doorstep at 9:42 for his third goal of the series.
Later, Harvard killed off a 5-on-3 lasting 1:45, then nabbed its first lead of the night in the aftermath of a hold against Yale’s Anthony Walsh. Threatening to shoot from the left faceoff circle—his favorite spot on the power play—Moy drew defenseman Charlie Curti out of the passing lane, then threaded a pass to Kerfoot by the far post. And standing a few feet outside the pipe, the co-captain one-timed a shot over Tucker to put the Crimson in front.
By the time the dust settled, Kerfoot, the three members of the all-senior second line, and sophomore Lewis Zerter-Gossage had accounted for all nine Harvard goals in the series. Donato called the play of his second forward unit “tremendous" in the wake of its 14-point weekend.
Now the Crimson will get set for Lake Placid, where Harvard will square off against either St. Lawrence, Quinnipiac, or Clarkson in the conference semifinals on Friday. As the second-ranked team in the country, the Crimson will crack the NCAA tournament field regardless of whether it wins the ECAC tournament. But Harvard has its sights set on its second Whitelaw Cup in three seasons nonetheless.
“I’m happy for the guys,” Donato said. “It’s not easy to get back to Lake Placid, and I think the guys are excited.”
—Staff writer Jake Meagher can be reached at jake.meagher@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @MeagherTHC.
