BOSTON--The freefall has officially hit a tailspin, but what an exciting ride.

The Harvard men's hockey team lost its fourth consecutive game last night falling to Northeastern, 8-7, in the 49th Annual Beanpot Tournament Consolation game. The Crimson sorely needed some consoling at the Fleet Center coming off its worst defeat in 20 years, a 7-0 drubbing a Dartmouth on Friday, but the Huskies were in no mood to pass out sympathy cards, coming back from deficits of 4-2, 6-3 and 7-5. The 15 goals were the most ever scored in the consolation game.

"We're struggling right now," Harvard Coach Mark Mazzoleni said. "We've completely lost our edge defensively. We ran around and chased guys in the defensive zone."

Husky Senior Graig Mischler ended the sloppy shootout on a goal with 2:57 left in regulation time. Mischler knocked an off-balance pass by junior Chris Lynch with a Harvard defender draped all over him.

It appeared Harvard had put the game away when captain Steve Moore netted a shorthanded goal at 4:36 of the third period--his fifth point of the night--but Northeastern would simply not fold in an otherwise meaningless game between two struggling teams.

The Huskies trailed the whole game, but took advantage of a porous Harvard defense that would let it roam free in the slot unmarked and go fishing for pucks in front of senior goalie Oli Jonas at will. Aside from the dramatic final goal, almost all of Northeastern's offense came in discrete, two-goal clusters. The Huskies scored a pair 30 seconds apart in the first, 47 seconds apart in the second and the score went from 7-5 to 7-7 on a duet separated by just 27 ticks in the third, at 5:25 and 5:53.

Sophomore winger Mike Ryan put the puck in an open net to make the game 7-6 and Leon Hayward brought what few fans had trekked to the Fleet Center for the opening game to their feet by trickling a rebound past a sprawled Jonas from the low slot to even the game.

"Once we started playing the body, it really opened the ice for us," said Mischler, who had a goal and three assists on the night for the Huskies. "It's important to comeback and shows we can get into a gun fight."