Despite being outplayed by a superior offense, the Crimson still managed to perform in certain aspects of the game. Harvard lost the faceoff battle for the third game in a row, but the team came out on top in the ground ball game, 23-20.

“We played hard between the lines,” Wojcik said. “We didn’t give up transition goals, and we really fought for ground balls. That helped keep us in the game.”

But Harvard struggled to execute offensively, only finding the net with eight of its 43 shots.

“We got outplayed,” Wojcik said. “The beat us particularly on faceoffs, but it really came down to their offense executing better than ours. We played hard, and winning the ground ball battle was big, but our offense was not as sharp as theirs.”

The Crimson failed to stop the Great Dane attackmen throughout the match and gave up a number of penalties as a result. Starting defensemen Robert Duvnjak and Petrucci were each charged with three penalties, and Albany was given eight man-up chances in all to Harvard’s six. The Crimson also failed to capitalize on the first five of these opportunities, whereas Albany went 3-of-8.

“We just got outplayed on both ends of the field,” Petrucci said. “We didn’t support our guys when we needed to, and they have some great players. We need to play better team defense and we will going forward.… The mistakes that we made were correctable, and I think we all like the position that we are in.”

—Staff writer Theo Levine can be reached at tlevine@college.harvard.edu.