You only had to catch the 38th and 39th minutes of Friday night’s scuffle between the No. 12 Harvard men’s hockey team and No. 13 Colgate to understand what kind of night it really was.

At 17:44 in the second period, you’d have seen Crimson forward Dave Watters whistled for hitting-from-behind, one of a slew of costly Harvard penalties.

Thirty-two seconds later, you’d have watched the Raiders knock home a puck that bounced high off Crimson blueliner Dylan Reese and right into Colgate hands, one of a slew of unlucky Harvard caroms.

And just moments after that, you’d have witnessed assistant captain Ryan Lannon shattering his stick on the goalframe, disgusted by the eventual game-winning goal.

It was just that kind of night.

“I think we kind of left the game up to chance,” said captain Noah Welch of the 3-1 loss, his team’s first home defeat all season.

“Tonight,” he added, “we just kind of were hoping for a good bounce, hoping for a late goal, and you can’t win games like that.”

The Crimson (9-5-2, 6-4-1 ECAC) actually took the Bright Center ice with an early edge, dominating the first five minutes of play. Outshooting the Raiders (14-5-0, 6-1-0) by an 8-2 count in those early moments, Harvard seemed determined to atone for its abysmal pre-Christmas showing in the Dodge Holiday Classic.

But then, suddenly, Colgate turned it on—or the Crimson turned it off—and that, as they say, was the ballgame.

In the remaining 15 minutes of the first period, the Raiders outshot Harvard 12-0. The Crimson was whistled for five penalties during that time. Moreover, on two man-advantages, Harvard could barely push the puck past its own blueline, much less muster any sort of attack.

All in all, the squad went 1-for-6 on its power play—one that had heretofore been a strength.

“The unit I’m on was horrible,” Welch said of the team’s top quintet. “We didn’t have, really, any chances.”

“It was us,” he added, responding to a question regarding Colgate’s penalty kill. “Every team plays, pretty much, a similar [penalty kill] in the neutral zone and in the [defensive] zone, so it was definitely us. It really didn’t have that much to do with them.

“I don’t know—I don’t think guys wanted the puck tonight, weren’t supporting each other.”

And that one man-advantage tally that put the Crimson on the board? It came from Harvard’s second unit. At 5:27 into the final frame, sophomore Ryan Maki—quiet for much of the season and occasionally hobbled by injury—netted a pretty feed from junior Dan Murphy, who hovered behind the left side of the goalmouth, to bring the Crimson within a goal.