HAMMING IT UP: Storyline Good For Crimson Future

As I spent my first season in the press box of the Bright Hockey Center, getting to know the ins and outs of covering the No. 16 Harvard men’s hockey team, the intensity that is a college hockey game did not surprise me.

But underneath that commotion—of players hustling to the puck or going for the body check in the corner—every game seemed to have one of those moments (call it a turning point, for lack of a better word) that only becomes obvious with the knowledge of the final score. Maybe it was a missed opportunity, the outcome of a one-on-one battle, or as random as a puck bouncing to the stick of the player, who happened to be attacking the net at just the right angle.

Those moments only become part of a team’s storyline when the skates are hung up for the year and the minds of sports fans start drifting towards baseball. After the Crimson skated off the ice in Albany, as Princeton started celebrating its 4-1 victory in the ECAC championship game and its resulting berth in the NCAA tournament, Harvard’s whole season can be arranged into a collection of turning points, whose outcomes became the storylines that this team’s play created.

For me at least, two games mark that trajectory on the season level, and the first one was not pretty. In a 7-2 loss to the Boston College Eagles that would mark the start of a seven game losing streak, the Crimson’s inability to play disciplined hockey and capitalize on scoring chances established itself as a frustration that would haunt Harvard all throughout its mid-year skid.

But those frustrations only wrote the background plot for the Beanpot Championship game. The storyline—the three goal third period deficit—is familiar to people who follow Harvard hockey.

As senior co-captain Mike Taylor netted the game-tying goal in the third, thanks to perfect positioning in front of the net, a new team emerged. Harvard was not just a promising team fighting its way out of a slump but a contender whose players’ willpower to make the most of the special opportunity meant that the Crimson would not go quietly whenever the game mattered the most.

Though the Eagles ended up taking advantage of a loose puck in overtime, my heart lumped in my throat for those 7:07 of sudden death, and I had to do my cheering on Gchat with friends back on campus.

Even if the outcome did not satisfy the Crimson, what transpired at the TD Banknorth Garden transformed Harvard’s season from a mid-season slump into an 8-2-1 finish in which Taylor frustrated opposing goaltenders with four goals and three assists.

But the Beanpot could have been nothing more than a team summoning additional effort to face an old rival in an exciting Boston tradition. Instead Harvard found the spark that dogged it throughout the losing streak and brought it to the ECAC playoffs to survive two single-elimination games in a row before the Tigers ended its season.

Maybe these turning points are not significant beyond their implications for one team in one season, but each year, they form the memories on which the hopes for the next season are based. As some of Harvard’s seniors, like Taylor and his co-captain Dave MacDonald, begin chasing the dream of playing professional hockey and the Crimson look forward to returning other starters, whose talents have emerged this season, those turning points won’t ever define a season in quite the same way again.

But that is part of the fun in following a team over multiple seasons.

The future looks bright for Harvard and although the team is losing the leadership of its captains and seniors, rising stars like goalie Kyle Richter—named a Division I New England All-Star on Tuesday—and freshmen forward Michael Biega still bring enough talent to lead the Crimson all the way to the Frozen Four in the near future.

So wherever next season begins for Harvard’s players, even for those players who will never skate again, they have the reward of knowing that they created a unique story whose own factors will hopefully unite and maybe, if those turning points go in the Crimson’s favor enough times, that storyline doesn’t have to end in Albany.

—Staff writer Robert T. Hamlin can be reached at rhamlin@fas.harvard.edu.