An early lead by third-ranked Harvard proved too big a hurdle for the Clarkson University Hockey team to overcome as the Golden Knights fell to the Crimson 4-1 at Bright-Landry Hockey Center in Cambridge, MA on Friday night.

The Golden Knights stand at .500 at 14-14-4 overall and at 9-9-3 in ECAC Hockey, good for sixth place in the conference standings. Clarkson closes out the regular season on Saturday at Dartmouth before opening conference playoff action at Cheel Arena next weekend against Rensselaer.

The hottest team in the country, Harvard (21-5-2, 15-4-2) jumped out to a 3-0 lead and then sealed their ninth straight win with an empty-net tally to stretch their current unbeaten streak to 11 games (10-0-1).

The Crimson outshot the Green and Gold 34-31. Clarkson struggles on the power play continued as the Knights went 0-of-6 with the man-advantage. Clarkson has now gone scoreless on the power play over the last six games (0-of-23). Harvard was 0-of-2 with the man-advantage.

Alexander Kerfoot started the Crimson scoring just 4:11 in to the opening period. Harvard scored again early in the middle frame with Phil Zielonka finding the back of the net at 5:42. A shorthanded goal by Luke Esposito just 73 seconds into the third period gave the home team a commanding 3-0 lead.

Clarkson got on the scoreboard at 7:41 when junior defenseman Terrance Amorosa (Kirkland, QUE) finished off assists from sophomore Juho Jokiharju (Tampere, Finland) and senior James de Haas (Mississauga, ONT) for his third goal of the season.

Harvard closed out the win with an empty-net goal by Adam Fox with 1:19 remaining to improve its record on home ice to 10-0-2.

Freshman Jake Kielly (Eden Prairie, MN) made 31 saves for the Knights.