EA Sports: Talent Finally Translates To Ice

Underachieving. Overrated. So talented, but oh-so inconsistent.

Those words have all been used in the past to describe the Harvard men’s hockey program.

This year, critics have to dig a lot deeper in their dictionaries to find something bad to say.

Halfway though its ECAC schedule, the No. 12 Crimson is 9-2 and off to its best start since 1993. Sure, Harvard has not yet had that national “statement game”—it could not pull off a victory on the road against either Cornell or BU. But the Crimson’s accomplishments so far this season might be even more impressive than a single big-time win.

Fans love victories over national powers, but the truth is they are somewhat overrated. St. Lawrence beat No. 2 UNH on the road Saturday—Harvard has not defeated a team ranked that high in the Mazzoleni era. Yet that upset puts the Saints at 3-11-1 on the year, good for last in the ECAC. I doubt any Harvard player would be willing to trade places with St. Lawrence right now.

When Harvard coach Mark Mazzoleni set the team’s goals for the year, he stressed consistency. Another mediocre regular season, leaving the Crimson hoping for a playoff miracle to make the NCAAs, would be unacceptable. With 13 NHL draft picks, Harvard is the most talented team in the conference and can match up offensively with any team in the country.

But to some extent, that’s been true for years—the team just never translated that on-paper talent into on-ice success.

Things didn’t start off well for the Crimson, which opened the season with an ugly, 4-0 loss to Brown. Since then, however, the Crimson has not turned in a subpar performance, even in its losses to Cornell and BU. Instead, the team has been a model of consistency.

Most of Harvard’s wins haven’t been close, and even the close ones haven’t been all that difficult—the Crimson has trailed just once in its victories this year and has never trailed in the third period. Simply put, Harvard hasn’t just beaten the teams it is supposed to, it has manhandled most of them.

Saturday’s win was even more impressive because No. 15 Yale has mirrored the Crimson’s success. The Elis (no relation) entered the game winners of seven of their last eight while averaging more than five goals a game. They exited Saturday night just another ECAC victim of the Crimson scoring machine.

Harvard has the talent up front to skate with anyone in the country and create its share of pretty goals. But the team is most dominant when it combines that skill with toughness in cycling the puck in the offensive zone, keeping possession and tiring out the defense while waiting for the perfect scoring chance.

“It’s like a heavyweight fight,” said Yale coach Tim Taylor ’63. “They just wear you down with body punches along the boards. By the end, our defense just got tired. There haven’t been too many teams that have been able to handle us down low the way Harvard did.”

Rebounding from a 2-0 deficit to tie the game in the second period, Yale showed it had the offensive talent to match Harvard. Playing on the road, previous Crimson teams might have lost their composure at this point. This year’s team just found another way to win, figuring that Yale could not score if it couldn’t leave its own zone. Five minutes and two long offensive cycles later, Harvard had regained its two-goal lead.

“Our guys showed a lot of poise. Once they started to get on a roll, we continued to attack and didn’t stay back on our heels,” Mazzoleni said. “Last year in this building that didn’t happen.”

This year, if Harvard can’t beat you with speed and playmaking, it will beat you with toughness and effort along the boards. Either way, if you’re a less-talented team, it will beat you.

Harvard at times plays with a type of arrogance, an attitude that its ECAC opponents don’t belong on the same rink. Fact is, with the exception of Cornell, that may well be true. But most importantly, that attitude is the mindset of an elite team. And after years of inconsistency and puzzling defeats, it’s finally become the mindset of the Crimson, too.

—Staff writer Elijah M. Alper can be reached at alper@fas.harvard.edu.