Spouting Off About the Curse of the Yale Whale

NEW HAVEN--It swallowed Jonah. It drowned Ahab.

And here last night, the Whale crushed the Harvard men's hockey team.

The Yale Whale, a.k.a. Ingalls Rink, has harpooned the Crimson before. In fact, Harvard has only beaten the Elis once in New Haven since 1976.

Olympians Lane MacDonald '88-'89 and Allen Bourbeau '87-'89 never slew the Whale. Neither did Hobey Baker brothers Mark Fusco '83 and Scott Fusco '85-86.

What is it about this architectural atrocity that confounds Bill Cleary's skaters? Yale, seventh in the ECAC last season, doesn't belong on the same rink as the national champs, so it must be something weird, right?

Cleary's Curse?

Maybe it's a jinx. There must be some reason the lowly Elis are 8-1-2 at home against the Crimson since the Bicentennial. Some Harvard-affiliated person somewhere must have said or done something really horrible to incur the wrath of the Connecticut sports gods. Home ice advantage is one thing, but the Elis have owned the Crimson.

"They're obviously a little snakebitten in our rink," said Yale Coach Tim Taylor, after his squad's 6-2 romp. "We're building on a myth here, a legend. I just hope it keeps up."

That must be it. There's no need to panic--there's just something about a building that looks like an upsidedown Noah's Ark. Isn't there?

"I don't buy any of that Whale tradition stuff, but we do have trouble winning here," wing John Weisbrod said. "Every year we come here thinking last year was a fluke, that we're the better team, that we should win, but we don't come up with a solid effort. If we could figure out what it was, it wouldn't happen."

But Why?

There has to be some explanation for the Crimson's collapse after the first period. Did some Yalie prankster tie Harvard's skates together? Was there a sudden outbreak of tuberculosis in the locker room? Did a drunken Zamboni driver miss a spot?

Perhaps it was the goalie. Last year, the Crimson sailed into the Whale with a 15-0 record and a number-one national ranking. Yale was 5-12-1 and struggling to avoid the ECAC cellar. But Eli netminder Mike O'Neill played out of his mind, smothering 46 Crimson shots in the Blue's 3-1 upset.

O'Neill has graduated, but his replacement, Ray Letourneau, came up with 35 stops of his own in last night's dismantling of the Crimson. That was the problem, right?

"He made some good saves, but we missed a lot of opportunities," said Cleary, whose career record in the Whale dropped below .500. "In the first period alone, we could have scored three or four more goals. We just didn't capitalize."

Well, that's true. Tim Burke, wearing MacDonald's number 19 jersey, was stuffed by Letourneau on an un-Hobey-like breakaway. Weisbrod, sporting the number 11 worn by The Goal-scorer Ed Krayer, missed a golden opportunity for a two-tally evening on a point-blank rebound. And highly touted freshman Ted Drury swung and missed the puck on his first collegiate shot.

Okay, so maybe the Blue owns the Crimson in the Whale because it gets especially motivated to play its timehonored rivals.

"We always get up for Harvard. I think all Yale teams do," said Eli forward Jeff Blaeser, who netted a hat trick. "It just makes it that much more important to win."

But that would be a terrible solution. The talented Crimson, ranked third in the nation coming into last night's debacle, better be able to knock off lesser teams that are gunning for it. As defending champions, everyone will be gunning for them.

It could be the rust factor. Usually, Harvard gets beached in the Whale in mid-January, right after a lengthy exam layoff. This year, Yale already had a scrimmage under its belt. Harvard was playing its season opener, its first competitive game since that glorious day in St. Paul.

"Coming off the year we had last year without any exhibition games, I think things we're getting a little lethargic, a little complacent," Weisbrod said.

Last night's eye-opener should put an end to the crimson's complacency. Why try to explain a jinx? It's like explaining the origin of the universe or the motivation behind the blue and white deodorant Stick-Ups the Eli fans threw onto the ice after Blaeser's first goal.

As Cleary said, it's a 26-game season. And thankfully, the next time Harvard faces Yale, it will be at Bright Center--where the Crimson hasn't fallen to the Blue since 1977.

Blaming the loss on the supernatural may be an unfair rationalization, but there's no reason to panic.

But the supernatural is more fun. Maybe Harvard football Coach Joe Restic made some kind of deal with those sports gods to secure The Game next Saturday. Maybe Derek Bok once said something unkind about Melville. Maybe...