Showing Tonight: 'The Season After'

The big story of this year's hockey season is what happened last year.

For a few weeks last March, the Harvard hockey team was the number-one sports item in town, as it kept winning through weekend after weekend of post-season play, losing only in the NCAA championship game.

The problem is, Coach Bill Cleary didn't have his top stars signed to long-term contracts. When June rolled around, eight letter-men, including Mark Fusco, winner of last year's Hobey Baker Award as the top collegiate player in the nation, picked up their diplomas. And two talented centers who would be juniors this year aren't back, either: Scott Fusco is playing, with brother Mark, for the U.S. Olympic team, and Greg Chalmers is spending a year working in a hospital in Edmonton, near his hometown.

Down to the Wire

With the 1983-84 season starting tonight at Dartmouth, the Crimson's opening-night foe for the third straight year, the big question is just how far Harvard hockey will fall from last year's best-ever finish.

The 10 players from last season absent from the current squad accounted for 103 of the 177 goals scored in the '82-'83 campaign. Besides the Fuscos some other major departures are those of the Olson brothers, team Captain Greg and ECAC tournament MVP Mitch, and a pair of new pro players, defenseman Neil Sheehy and forward Greg Britz.

What's left? First of all, Grant Blair, who last season had one of the best freshman seasons any goaltender ever enjoyed, is back as a sophomore to mind the nets. Picked by the Calgary Flames in the sixth round of the NHL's June draft. Blair allowed 2.74 goals per game, the NCAA's second-best mark.

Crimson Captain Ken Code insists the situation at the front line isn't as bad as it might look. "There's no denying that we lost a lot of our best players," Code says, "but we have a very good crop of forwards who came back. We have eight senior forwards."

Shayne Kukulowicz, the leading scorer in that group, seems a likely pick to play on the starting line (which Cleary hadn't set last night); among the others, Phil Falcone and Tony Visone saw the most action last season.

But even with those eight, some unfamiliar names will be skating on the four lines this winter. One very good candidate is freshman Allen Bourbeau, a local star who was probably the leading high school player in the country last year. He started at center in Harvard's scrimmage loss to Boston College and its 11-2 rout at the hands of the Olympic squad.

Another source of help up front will probably be some of last year's JV stars, such as Peter Follows, Ralph Hartmann and Rob Onno.

"Among the forwards," Cleary says, "we still have quickness. Whether we have the goal production. I don't know. It was something of a problem against B.C., when the forwards zoomed up and down the Bright Hockey Center ice, but never put the puck in the net.

Cleary is most worried about the defense, where, he notes, "Ken [Code] is the only one who has a considerable amount of experience." His tentative defense pairs are Code with sophomore Tim Smith, junior Brad Kwong with freshman Butch Cutone, who looked very sharp against the Olympians, and Bill Cleary Jr., who played for the JV last year, with freshman Randy Taylor With Code missing the opener because of a bruised kidney suffere in the loss to the Olympic squad, those pairs will be shuffled for tonight.

An encouraging thought for the Crimson is the knowledge that many of the teams aiming to take Harvard's ECAC title are also reeling from losses--not just to graduation. The ECAC's top scorer last year. George Servinis, has left RPI for the Canadian squad Providence, the 4-1 loser to the Crimson in the ECAC final, not only lost two All-Americans to graduation but two highly touted incoming freshmen to the NHL. Three New Hampshire skaters defected to the pro ranks before graduation, and Clarkson lost its high-scorer, Colin Patterson, in the same way.

The two best teams to escape such woes are two local rivals, B.C. and B.U., the leading early-season bets for the title.