The men’s hockey team’s season came to a disappointing end Sunday night as archrival Harvard (12–9–11, 8–5–9 ECAC) delivered a 8–2 loss to the Elis. The win gave Harvard a 2–1 series win over Yale in the best-of-three ECAC quarterfinals. The Cantabs will travel next weekend to Atlantic City, NJ for a semifinal matchup against Cornell. Meanwhile, the Bulldogs (16–16–3, 10–10–2) pack up their skates after dropping a 1-0 series lead and failing to defend their ECAC championship.
Although Harvard was riding the momentum after Game 2, the Elis got off to a strong start in the deciding Game 3. Yale put one on the board early when Chad Ziegler ’12 scored for the second game in a row to get an early lead. From the middle slot, Ziegler backhanded a shot that snuck inside the near post for the goal.
But Yale’s only lead of the night did not stand for long. Harvard scored its first goal of six straight just two minutes later when Harvard’s star forward Alex Killorn notched his first goal of the series. Killorn stole a Yale clearance, dodged an Eli defenseman and put a shot through the five-hole to even the score.
The two sides went into the locker room at the end of the first period with a 1-1 tie, but Harvard came out and played like a different team en route to outscoring the Bulldogs by a whopping 4-0 margin in the second period.
The Crimson scored just 35 seconds into the middle frame when Alex Fallstrom put a wrap-around goal past Yale netminder Nick Maricic ’13 to get Harvard’s first lead of the night.
The Cantabs struck again exactly halfway through the period to take a pivotal 3–1 lead. The goal followed a miscommunication between the officials. A linesman raised his hand on an obvious icing call, which was not waived off. Still, Harvard’s Tommy O’Regan raced down the ice, took the puck from a Yale defenseman and passed to the Crimson’s David Valek who put it in from the slot.
From there, Yale had trouble climbing back into the action. Killorn scored his second goal of the night at the end of the middle frame to extend the lead to 4–1.
Down three goals heading into the third period, the Elis made a change in net by substituting Jeff Malcolm ’13 in for Maricic. But the move was not an improvement for the Bulldogs. Malcolm allowed two goals in 15 minutes and his replacement, Connor Wilson ’15, gave up a goal in the final five minutes of the game.
Yale did put in one more goal before the final horn sounded. On a power play about midway through the third period, Antoine Laganiere ’13 found the back of the net when he fired a wrist shot from the left circle. That goal featured the first point of the series for Yale captain and leading goal-scorer Brian O’Neill ’12, who assisted on the play.
The Bulldogs were the No. 3 seed in the tournament. Colgate, Harvard, Union and Cornell are advancing to the ECAC semifinals in Atlantic City.