Fighting The Past

The Harvard men's hockey team could never escape from the ghosts of its own past.

While the basketball team was 200 yards away trying to rewrite the tragedy of the last 81 years, the 1984 icemen tried to live down just a single season--or rather, three weeks of brilliant success. In one briefing shining month last year, the Crimson astonished the hockey world by catapulting from the obscurity of the Ivy League and into the final game of the NCAA tournament.

By tying Clarkson, 2-2, Saturday night at Bright Center and being eliminated from the ECAC quarterfinals, the Crimson broke with the winning tradition of the last several seasons. In other, more important, more ineffable ways, however, they lived up to and perhaps even surpassed the standards of the Harvard hockey tradition.

Like Harvard teams of the past two years, the icemen saved their best for last. Against the Golden Knights, a much stronger club overall, the Crimson pushed as hard as it could and almost came away with a huge upset.

But sometimes, even your best isn't good enough.

"They accomplished a hell of a lot, probably more than most teams I've coached," said Harvard Coach Bill Cleary.

"What else can you ask for?"

But few athletes would ever accept defeat on those terms. And indeed, as the Crimson, particularly its eight seniors, undressed and packed up its equipment for the final time, there was no joy. A stillness was in the locker room as 20 drained hockey players looked for reasons for the loss. But underneath the silence, underneath the hung-down heads and flushed heads, underneath the queasy feeling that there were no more chances, there was a stubborn stoicism.

It was the stoicism of a team that had done all that it could.

"We played over our heads in the last few games," said senior Rob Wheeler.

The only real tragedy was not on the ice. Saturday night, only 2200 spectators showed up to watch the icemen play a close-checking, exciting, well-played game. The Harvard fans have been so spoiled by past success that they apparently don't have time to see a less talented but just as hard-working team in the biggest game of the season.

And although the hardcore that did show up was faithful to the end, giving the icemen a three-minute standing ovation after the final whistle, the packed-to-the-rafters fanaticism of previous campaigns was nowhere to be found.

Except on the ice, where the brand, if not the quality, of never-say-die hockey remained the same.

The team's gritty attitude was perhaps best enshrined in sophomore netminder Grant Blair. While Blair had been diligently laboring away in the Crimson nets, turning away almost everything that he humanly could, his teammates just up the ice were struggling. All Year, the icemen had seldom found the switch to turn on the red lamp. This weekend was no different.

Blair, however, did not let his teammates' inability to score frustrate him. Instead, he took it as a challenge, a challenge to shut out the opposition, to give it nothing cheap to undermine the precious value of the few scores the Crimson did earn.

And Blair's final stats spoke for themselves--a 91.0 save percentage and a 3.09 goals-against average--numbers earned working with a blue-line corps whose play was perhaps best exemplified by Captain Ken Code. A small, choppy player praised for the accuracy rather than the force of his slap-shots. Codes led the Crimson not with speeches, but by on ice example.

And like Blair, the entire squad worked around the obstacles, around the injuries, around the limits of their talent, around the absence of Fusco-like superstars. They did not complain, they did not make excuses, they just played as hard as they could.