A Week of Harvard Defensemen, Past and Present: Lane and Reese

Even by the standards of Harvard freshmen, Dylan Reese has had a lot on his mind recently.

His was a whirlwind introduction to college hockey, as he surpassed veteran defensemen on the depth chart to skate in the team’s first six games and earn assignments on special teams. He didn’t register any points, but his offensive instincts and defensive awareness showed him worthy of lofty preseason expectations.

Then he aggravated a back injury, keeping him out of the Crimson lineup for the past five games. Suddenly, phone calls from his parents in Pittsburgh were more about his health than hockey.

“My dad’s been so preoccupied with worrying about my injury and what he can do to help,” Reese said Tuesday. “My mom’s been worried, too.”

But last week, Reese received a call from USA Hockey official Jim Johansson that included a much more enjoyable conversation topic—Reese had been selected to compete for the United States at the 2004 International Ice Hockey Federation World Junior Championship.

“It kind of came as a shock to me,” said Reese, officially named to the 22-man roster on Tuesday. “I didn’t have a great start to the year, then I had the back injury, so I was just focused on getting back into the lineup.

“To be honest, I hadn’t really been thinking about [World Juniors].”

Reese was a late addition to the team’s tryout in August at Lake Placid, N.Y., but was not one of the 16 preliminary selections announced in October for the tournament, scheduled for Dec. 26, 2003-Jan. 5, 2004 in Helsinki and Hameenlinna, Finland.

That would cause him to miss four Harvard games—both games of Harvard’s post-Christmas tournament in Providence and its first two of the new year at Union and Rensselaer.

But this is a no-brainer, especially since the U.S. is expected to contender for the gold medal. Former U.S. Olympic coach Tim Taylor ’63 has said this will be one of the best U.S. teams in awhile.

“For a kid 18 to 20,” said Harvard coach Mark Mazzoleni, “this is like making the Olympics.”

Six defensemen were chosen in the initial group. Reese thought only one more would be selected to go along with 13 forwards and two goaltenders.

All along, Reese saw himself on the bubble, competing with two players for one spot. However, USA Hockey opted to take 12 forwards and eight defensemen.

Reese was surprised by the move, but it could have made the difference between him making the team and not making the team.

Reese made two phone calls after he learned he had been selected. The first was to his parents.

“They were amazed,” Reese recalled. “I don’t think any of us saw it coming.”

The next number he dialed was that of Grant Lewis, a freshman defenseman at Dartmouth—Reese’s neighbor, teammate and best friend in Pittsburgh since they were five years old.

“He was really excited for me, really proud of me,” Reese said of Lewis, whom he calls once or twice a week. “The way he’s playing this year, I can’t imagine a reason why he won’t be invited to the camp next year.”

Not long after the initial excitement over the selection passed, however, Reese was reminded that before he can play for his country, he has to get healthy. Reese is confident that he’ll be in the lineup against Massachusetts for Saturday’s 5 p.m. start and USA Hockey officials want to know by the weekend if he’s going to be able to play. Otherwise, they’ll need to re-evaluate defensemen and make another selection

“I feel confident that I will play. I should be 100 percent by then,” Reese said. “With USA Hockey, you have to be 100 percent sure. They spend hours and hours and hours putting together the exact team they want, and every different player is a piece of that puzzle, so if somebody can’t go, they need time to re-evaluate. And I wouldn’t want to play in the tournament if I wasn’t 100 percent. It’s not fair to your country, it’s not fair to yourself and it’s not fair to the guys who would take your place. But I see myself being able to play. I don’t know why I wouldn’t be able to.”

Reese is the 18th Crimson player to be selected to the U.S. Junior National Team. Most recently, junior defenseman Noah Welch was picked as a freshman in 2001. But Brett Nowak ’03 was the last to participate, since Welch missed the tournament because of a leg injury.

“Hopefully he doesn’t end up the same way I did,” Welch said Tuesday, adding that he was “not surprised at all” to see Reese make the team.

“It’s a pretty big accomplishment for him—probably one of his biggest to date —and it’s also great for our program to have,” Welch said. “We know he’ll represent Harvard and his family and himself to the best of his abilities.”

As one of the team’s more experienced defensemen, Welch has kept an eye on his younger teammate, even as early as Reese’s recruiting visit. All along, Welch has seen similarities between the two—quite a compliment to Reese, considering Welch was named an All-American as a sophomore.

“He came in here with a lot of confidence, which was the same way I did,” Welch said. “Not overconfidence, but just knowing that you can come in and help the team out, and that’s something [USA Hockey] looks at.

“I know he had a great tryout with them, and I actually didn’t have a great one when I was there. He’s stepped right in here and been one of our power-play guys as a freshman, so this is well-deserved. I would’ve been surprised if he didn’t make it.”

All that remains is the question of health, and his attire on Saturday will be telling. If he’s wearing a suit, as he was during Wednesday’s loss to Boston College, he may not be able to play in Finland.

But if he’s back in his No. 7 sweater—and playing well—he’ll make another happy phone call home to Pittsburgh.

Life in the Fast Lane

Jesse Lane, the highly-touted recruit who left Havard in November 2001 after playing only three games, is returning to the Yard in late January to pursue a Government degree.

In a recent telephone interview, he said he doesn’t regret leaving Harvard, and that the University’s flexibility in allowing extended leaves of absence for undergrads was a factor in his decision. “If I didn’t know [for certain] that I could come back, I wouldn’t have done that,” Lane said.

Lane made clear that he did not leave Harvard as a knee-jerk response to Mazzoleni benching him after he took two slashing penalties at Vermont in the third game of that season, or because of his relationship with Mazzoleni in general.

“It’s not true at all, but people assume that because I left so abruptly,” Lane said, adding his was a “family decision.”

“There was nothing between Mazz and me. I have a lot of respect for him as a coach…. It was just a lack of games [Harvard has a 29-game regular season]. I feel you have to be playing more games to develop. On Saturday night, you might have an off game, but then you come back on Tuesday and you can redeem yourself. In certain college programs, you have to wait another week.”

Lane played the last two years in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, which has a 70-game regular season, and last year led all Canadian Major Junior defensemen in scoring. But the NHL’s Carolina Hurricanes, which drafted him in 2002, did not offer him a contract in the off-season.

“I knew they weren’t financially doing so well, and when camp came they said, ‘We don’t have money for you,’” Lane said.

Lane told the Hurricanes they “made a big mistake,” and—since he didn’t want to play another season of Major Junior and can’t play at Harvard because the NCAA considers Major Junior professional hockey—decided to come back to school.

“I missed school,” said Lane, whose parents both have Harvard degrees. “It’s very important in my code of ideals. I’m really looking forward to getting back.”

Since he made the decision too late to register for the fall term, Lane worked an internship at The Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank in Washington. Lane, who aspires to a political career, spent a lot of time during the internship on Capitol Hill.

“I learned to look at everything with a skeptical eye,” Lane said, “who’s publishing what.”

But as the weather turned cool, Lane missed the rink. So he got back in touch with the Des Moines Buccaneers, the USHL team with whom he played as a teenager. They were short a defenseman, and happy to bring him back.

“On a team that’s this young, to have a guy with his experience and his poise is huge,” Des Moines coach Bob Ferguson said. “We’re a different team with him.”

“I’m just here for fun, to tell you the truth,” Lane said. “It’s refreshing. There’s no more pressure on me to put up a certain number of points. I’m just on the ice, not stressed about what’s going to happen.”

He’s staying with the same host family, the Falveys, who housed him as a 16-year-old. “This is probably the best housing I’ve ever had,” Lane said. “This is a typical, all-around Midwestern family. They cook soup and stuff. This is no B.S., all Midwestern.”

Ironically, Lane’s initial decision to opt for a longer schedule has taken him back to the USHL, which plays a schedule of mostly Friday and Saturday games. And his hockey season will end much earlier than usual, since Lane returns to Cambridge during intersession, though Ferguson said there has been some talk of Lane flying to Des Moines for late-season games.

Lane plans to keep himself in hockey shape after he returns to school by skating with a team in the area. He’ll watch Harvard games and hang out with the Crimson players he still keeps in touch with, like Dov Grumet-Morris and Rob Flynn. But because of the decision he made two years ago, he will not be able to practice or play with them.

Out of necessity as much as choice, Lane is focused on academics now. He has taken summer classes here and has the equivalent of a full semester of credits. So, even though he did not receive credit for the courses he began in the fall of 2001, he’s a second-semester freshman. His ’05 has been traded in for a shiny new ’07, and at 20 years old, he’s a good fit for the senior citizens table at Annenberg.

But until he officially returns, Des Moines isn’t a bad spot for Lane, given his two favorite subjects—hockey and politics. The Iowa Caucus, after all, is set for Jan. 19.

—Staff writer Jon Paul Morosi can be reached at morosi@fas.harvard.edu.