Konik Proves Himself, Could be Used at Top of Slot

HAMILTON, N.Y.--Maybe they needed something like this. A dead rink, a dead town, a dead game...something to make the men of Harvard Hockey look in the mirror and see themselves, members of a team on life-support only six weeks into the season.

That's what the Crimson got on Saturday, really for the first time all year. Away from the world of Grilles and formals, lectures and papers, the whistling wind and the snow-capped cornfields of central New York buffet you with hints of another culture--on the roads that lead to Ithaca (Cornell), Potsdam (Clarkson), Canton (St. Lawrence), you remember that there are places which, unlike Cambridge, truly need hockey to make them whole.

It's not quite like that in Hamilton, where the bleakness of the scenery--that bond which ties it to the other three rural hockey hotbeds of the Empire State--is matched only by the Red Raider fans' indifference. You have to generate your own energy to win at Colgate: the home crowd's eternal ennui won't help you along.

Somehow, Harvard was able to accomplish this. Its performance still lacked the crispness which characterized last season's campaign; Steve Martins' fatal (and monumentally boneheaded) lapse in discipline will be looked back upon as one of the lowlights of the entire college hockey season; but the joy of the Crimson players which greeted the final buzzer was as justified as it was spontaneous.

A win is a win is a win, right? Even during last year's world-beating season, the Harvard train jumped the tracks at Colgate, a 7-6 loss paving the way to a 2-3-1 stretch of results in which the Crimson played its worst hockey of the year; perhaps just the opposite could be triggered by a bonus result at Starr Rink this time around.

Nobody on the team could have possibly savored the outcome more than Brad Konik, the junior forward who rescued Harvard twice from early one-goal deficits with the final touches on elegantly constructed scoring plays.

On this year's form, inconsistency and fits of frustration have been Konik's chief calling cards, but he saved Harvard from its malaise with some power of his own.

"It happened to be me, but it could have been anyone the way we were playing [Saturday night]," Konik said of his comrades. "That was our best overall performance on the year relative to how we reacted to [Colgate's] goals."

Lewis Carroll might have penned it thusly: "Oh, frabjous day! Calloo, callay! A third-period goal goes Harvard's way!" Even as the one short-term evil spirit was ushered away, though, the more important exorcism might have been performed on Konik, his two goals serving as bell, book and candle to his early-season slump.

"I've really had only two good games this year [a goal and two assists at Princeton marking the other]," he said. "It's good that I know that I still have it; now it's a matter of fine-tuning what's there."

"Still" because a major knee injury sidelined Konik for the majority of his sophomore season, as he took last year off as a medical red-shirt. Konik has always flashed out-bursts of consummate talent, but the road to psychic recovery can be tougher than the physical battle he seems to have already won; night to night, he creeps further back into the mental shell of his former hockey-playing self.

"He's been away from the game for two years--that's the reason his play has been marked by inconsistency," Harvard coach Ronn Tomassoni said. "You just have to be patient and keep the faith, because he's just too good a hockey player not to perform well on nights like this."

"There was a time when I was thinking about everything too much, getting too easily down on myself and getting really depressed," Konik said. "I just had to kick myself in the butt and say, 'hey, keep on working, and things will come.'"

Konik has been exiled onto the fourth Harvard offensive line of late, along with seniors Ben Coughlin and Perry Cohagan--last on the pregame line-sheet, last in terms of ice-time. It's tough to lead from the rear, and yet Konik tries to remain philosophical about his role on the team.

"I know right now that I'm not performing to the point where I deserve any more ice-time," he said. "And though I definitely need it right now, [Tomassoni] has to do what is best for the team, and if that means playing other players, that means playing other players."

One might argue that it doesn't mean that at all. Harvard's impotent power play-zero-for-Colgate, an all-too-familiar result--needs help, and with Martins suspended for the first of two games at Alaska-Fair-banks after his game-misconduct penalty, here's a suggestion: move Cory Gustafson over to Martins' spot on the right flank and give Konik a shot in the quarterback's position at the top of the slot.

For one game, it could be a start: the power play needs a kick-start, and the team as a whole could still use a booster shot. And Tomassoni is right--Konik is too good to stay downtrodden for long.

To paraphrase an old adage, if you've got the horses, use them. Harvard needs a strong Brad Konik, and maybe the time to use him is coming quickly.