Five Men's Hockey Players Earn All-Ivy League Honors

No. 12 Harvard and No. 2 Cornell have battled each other all year for the top spot in the ECAC standings, but over the next few weeks, several players from both teams will be fighting over hardware.

The awards season for men’s college hockey started last Friday when the All-Ivy teams were announced.

The Crimson (19-8-2, 17-4-1 ECAC) and Big Red (24-4-1, 19-2-1) each placed three players on the first team and five overall.

Harvard captain Dominic Moore, junior winger Tim Pettit and sophomore defenseman Noah Welch earned first team All-Ivy honors.

“It’s nice to be chosen for the award because it’s something voted on by the coaches,” Moore said. “But I really don’t put too much weight in this kind of stuff. If someone votes to select me, I’m honored, but it’s not the most important thing.”

Senior center Brett Nowak was a second team selection and sophomore goaltender Dov Grumet-Morris picked up an honorable mention.

“It is a great feeling to be selected for the first team, especially with the strength of the Ivy league this year,” Pettit said. “Being there with a teammate like Domi, it’s even better. It is great.”

Pettit led the ECAC in scoring with 16 goals and 26 assists for 42 points. Moore posted similar totals with 21 goals and 20 assists while leading the league with seven power-play goals.

“We have a lot of very skilled forwards,” Pettit said. “Especially on special teams, but also in our regular line combinations, we have a lot of offensive weapons. It makes it easier.”

Cornell junior forward Ryan Vesce, senior defenseman Doug Murray and sophomore goaltender David LeNeveu joined the three Crimson players on the first team.

“When you think about Cornell, you think about what a great team they are in the collective sense of the word,” Moore said. “But they have some great individual players who sometimes get overlooked. Murray specifically has been one of the top players in the league for the last three years.”

Moore, Vesce and LeNeveu, who was also named Ivy League player of the year, were all unanimous first team selections.

LeNeveu has been the most dominant goaltender in college hockey all year. He leads the nation with a 1.16 GAA and .943 SV%, and has compiled a 22-2-1 record and seven shutouts.

Harvard also has one of the top goaltenders in the country, and the two will likely meet for at least a third time this season in the ECAC finals.

Grumet-Morris is fifth in the nation with a 2.24 GAA and second, behind only LeNeveu, with a .929 SV%.

“To be honest, I didn’t have a clue I was on the All-Ivy team until you just told me,” Grumet-Morris said. “I can’t really lie and tell you that I’ve been thinking about it and am so excited to get it. Obviously I’m honored, but it’s not where my mind is now.”

With the playoffs just starting, Grumet-Morris said that the awards come at a difficult time in the year.

“It’s tough to think about individual awards when we’re about to start the playoffs,” Grumet-Morris said. “The playoffs are such a team competition.”

Cat Calls

The No. 2 seed Crimson will face the No. 10 seed Vermont Catamounts in the ECAC quarterfinals.

The Catamounts (13-18-3, 8-14-0) swept Clarkson (12-20-3, 9-10-3), the No. 7 seed, with 3-2 and 6-1 victories this past weekend in Potsdam, N.Y.

It was the second time in three years that Vermont has upset the Golden Knights in the playoffs. As the No. 10 seed two years ago, the Catamounts defeated then-top-seeded Clarkson in one of the biggest upsets in ECAC playoff history.

Harvard may have caught a break by avoiding the Golden Knights. The Crimson skated to a 3-3 tie with Clarkson on the final weekend of the regular season, and Harvard narrowly squeaked out a 2-1 victory on the road Nov. 11.

The Crimson swept the season series against Vermont with 5-2 and 4-2 victories.

In the other three first round series, RPI upset Union, Colgate held off St. Lawrence and Brown swept Princeton.

Top-seeded Cornell will face RPI, Dartmouth hosts Colgate and Brown travels to Yale for what promises to be a close quarterfinal match-up.

If the Season Ended Today...

Harvard would face No. 8 Boston University (23-12-3, 13-10-1 HE) at the NCAA Northeast Regional in Worcester, Mass.

Although the Crimson did not touch the ice this past weekend, Harvard’s chances of an at-large bid improved dramatically.

The Crimson jumped over No. 14 Denver and unranked Providence into the 14th spot in the USCHO pairwise rankings (PWR).

Providence may have played its last game this season after being swept by BU in their Hockey East quarterfinal series.

Denver also struggled on the road with a pair of losses at No. 1 Colorado College.

Unfortunately for Harvard, the season did not end this weekend, and there are still two more weeks of hockey to be played before the NCAA tournament begins.

“Obviously we keep an eye on the PWR rankings because they’re important,” Grumet-Morris said. “The problem with the USCHO pairwise rankings is that they’re just an update. We don’t really know how it’s all going to play out until the conference tournaments are over. While you can follow it, and some of us do, it’s incomplete until the season’s over.”

Although nothing will be settled until the NCAA makes the official announcement and factors in its yet undisclosed “quality wins” bonus, Harvard fans would be well advised to keep their eyes on the WCHA quarterfinal series between Denver and No. 11 North Dakota.

If North Dakota can knock the Pioneers out of the playoffs and the Crimson advances to the ECAC semifinals, Harvard will take a giant leap towards solidifying its claim for an at-large bid.

Obviously the Crimson can put all this speculation and scoreboard watching to rest if it can win the ECAC tournament and earn one of six automatic bids to the 16-team NCAA tournament.

Harvard starts the ECAC playoffs this Friday at home against Vermont and will likely face Cornell in the ECAC finals in Albany, N.Y. on Mar. 22.

—Staff writer Timothy Jackson can be reached at jackson2@fas.harvard.edu.