The Quest Begins

For the second year in a row, the Harvard men’s hockey team was forced to watch the NCAA tournament from Cambridge at the end of last season.

The Crimson came agonizingly close to an NCAA bid—the team’s loss to Princeton in the finals of the ECAC tournament ended its quest to travel to nationals. Harvard’s close call came after a miraculous winning streak during the months of February and March, that helped the team recover from a 10-game winless streak during December and January.

But now, that experience is in the past, and a new quest to qualify for the tournament starts in Harvard’s opening game tonight against Dartmouth.

“I think getting off to a good start is real key to our season this year, especially with the middle of the season last year. We kind of had that slump,” co-captain Jimmy Fraser says. “It’s almost like our season was broken up into three sections with exams after Christmas in January.”

Alongside co-captain Brian McCafferty, the duo brings a wealth of experience, having played in a combined 192 college hockey games.

The pair will lead the talented but young group—17 of the 27 members of the team are underclassmen —in its annual journey towards an ECAC championship. Whether or not the squad reaches this goal will depend greatly on the success of the younger players in the program.

“I always go into a season with high expectations,” says Harvard coach Ted Donato ’91. “I think there’s definitely a large amount of uncertainty in the fact that we are trying to get a lot of young players into the program.”

Much of the uncertainty was eased with the powerful offensive performance of the team’s rookies last weekend. In the team’s exhibition game against Québec-Trois-Rivières, all three of the Crimson’s goals were scored by freshmen. Additionally, two of their classmates tallied assists, and freshman goalkeeper Matt Hoyle started the first period in net.

“We graduated a few guys who were key to our offense, but we also found a few freshmen who can really put the puck in the net, so I don’t think we’ve lost any offense,” Fraser says. “The upperclassmen are looking good too so I think all aspects of our game are going to be coming together.”

The rookies will join Fraser, junior forward Doug Rogers, and sophomore forwards Matt McCollem and Michael Biega to highlight the Harvard offense.

McCafferty will anchor the Crimson defense—a unit that scored more goals than any other defense in the league—with junior defenseman Alex Biega, who has been named to the ECAC Preseason All-League Team. He helped lead a Harvard power play that converted over 20 percent of its opportunities. McCafferty and Biega will be backed up by junior defensemen Chad Morin and Ian Tallett, sophomore Chris Huxley, and freshman Ryan Grimshaw­—who scored the eventual game-winning goal in last weekend’s exhibition game.

Perhaps the biggest gap in the defense will be the absence of last year’s goaltender, Kyle Richter, who was awarded the Ken Dryden Award as the best goalkeeper in the ECAC. Two of last year’s backup goaltenders and Hoyle will compete for the top job.

“Even though it’ll take a little bit of time to gel with each other, we feel our defense has a chance to be a strong suit for us,” Donato says.

After tonight’s season opener at home against the Big Green, the Crimson takes on the U.S. National Under-18 team tomorrow. In early February, Harvard will take on Boston University in the opening round of the Beanpot. Other highlights of the hockey calendar include faceoffs against Ivy League foes Cornell on Nov. 21 and Feb. 14 and Yale on Jan. 10 and Feb. 6.

“Cornell is always a huge rivalry for us, especially in all three of my past seasons, and Yale’s always tough,” Fraser says. “The other schools in our conference are just as strong if not stronger, so we look forward to each game, especially at home.”

—Staff writer Lucy D. Chen can be reached at lucychen@fas.harvard.edu.