No. 9 Men’s Ice Hockey Ties Michigan Before Dropping First Game of the Season | Sports

After starting the season 7-0-0 for the program’s best start in over 30 years, the No. 9 Harvard men’s ice hockey team knew its stiffest test of the campaign thus far awaited them in a Thanksgiving weekend series on the road against the No. 5 Michigan Wolverines. Loaded with top NHL prospects Luke Hughes, Mackie Samoskevich, and Adam Fantilli, Michigan is among the favorites to win the national title this season. In two highly competitive games at Yost Ice Arena in Ann Arbor, Mich., the Wolverines and the Crimson battled to a 4-4 draw on Friday night before Michigan pulled away late on Saturday night to hand Harvard a 4-1 defeat, their first of the year.

“It was a great test for us to come out to play an excellent team with a lot of talent and to play on the road in a real loud and exciting environment,” head coach Ted Donato said. “I think that it was an opportunity for our team to develop and grow and to stress our structure.”

The value of the opportunity to face such a talented out-of-conference team was not lost on the Crimson, which has aspirations of making a deep NCAA tournament run this season.

“I think for us these are the games we want to be in,” said senior defenseman and captain Henry Thrun. “There’s a real value in learning what it takes to be a championship team and how to beat opponents you’ll face in a one game set and out of league that might play a different style.”

MICHIGAN 4, HARVARD 1

Coming off of an overtime game the night before, the Crimson got off to a slow start in the first period on Friday, as Michigan jumped out to an early lead, scoring just over two minutes into the game. After Wolverines defenseman Luca Fantilli made a strong play along the boards to send the puck behind the net, forward Nick Granowicz drove around the net and fired a backhand through the crease, where the puck deflected off a skate right to forward Mark Estapa for the easy tap-in goal. Michigan continued to press throughout the period, with a sustained offensive zone shift drawing a tripping penalty on first-year forward Joe Miller, giving the Wolverines a power play. Harvard survived on the penalty kill despite a close call when Michigan forward Mackie Samoskevich hit the iron, but the Wolverines put together several dominant shifts in a row after the power play. With 30 seconds to play in the first period, Samoskevich tallied his 12th goal of the campaign after one-timing a no-look pass from forward Adam Fantilli, who had been tied…