Greg Olson: Retired at 21?

The numbers don't reveal the true importance of Greg Olson to the Harvard hockey team.

Yes, as a freshman he led the Crimson with 16 goals and shared the team's Most Valuable Player trophy with Mark Fusco.

Yes, as a sophomore he turned on the red light 18 times and had 14 points, both team highs.

Yes, as a junior he had 15 goals (second on the squad) and 24 asists (also second), and scored 20 points in the last seven regular season games when Harvard put together a drive to the playoffs.

Yes, he led the team in power play goals last season and in shorthanded goals in each of the last two. Yes, he was second on the team in scoring up to the Princeton game. And yes, he was the only Harvard player to have notched a point in every game up to that same Princeton game.

Yes, yes, and yes But the true importance of Greg Olson. Harvard's 85th captain, was something more.

"He kills penalties as well as anyone," says Harvard Coach Bill Cleary. "He puts the puck in the net He comes back and play defense. But it's those little intangibles, that little bit of spunk, that made Greg Olson special.

"He can set a team on fire. He gets knocked down, he gets up, he gets knocked down again, he gets up and gets a shot off. The other players got inspired just by watching him.

"You don't run into kids like him every day. He's got that fiery competitive instinct. Any coach would like to have Greg Olson."

Right now, Cleary is the one who would like to have him For in the above-mentioned Princeton game, on December 18, Greg Olson got knocked down. And this time he didn't get back up.

It was midway through the third period, and Harvard had a comfortable lead on its way a 9-2 win. Olson was forechecking at the Princeton blueline.

"One of their defensemen had the puck," the senior right wing says, "I was going at him and he passed it up the boards I was starting to turn when some guy pushed me from behind.

"It was nothing dirty or anything, but I think my skate caught and twisted."

Olson slammed into the boards went down to the ice and came up limping to the bench. "My ankle hurt like hell," he says "I thought I'd sprained it."

He should have been so lucky. By the time he got his skate off. Olson realized the pain was above the ankle "I just said "It's broken "I knew it was broken."

The X-rays revealed that his right tibia had been fractured several inches above the ankle. The prognosis was eight weeks of plaster cast, and uncertainty about the hockey future of Greg Olson.

They said eight weeks, the Minnetonka, Minn., native says, "So that brings me to the second of third week of February. Then it should be three of four weeks to get back to normal. That's the middle of March. The only way the team is still going to be playing then is of we make the nationals. So it's an outside chance that I'll play again. As of right now, I think my season's over I'm basically retired."

An early retirement for someone who loved the game as much as Greg Olson did, and who played as hard as he did every minute on the ice has not been easy.

I'm not doing too bad now he says. "It was tough when we went to Duluth [Minnesota, where the team played its vacation tourney only three hours from Greg's home]. But life goes on, hockey goes on," he adds with a laugh.

"The toughest part is going to the games. You play an active part and then you play a passive part. Before the game I can go down and just talk to the team I'm psyched up, too, because I just want to win. But there's only so much I can do I don't want to be a cheerleader."

Cleary has decided to rotate the remaining seniors as captains for each game. But he emphasizes that Olson, despite his injury, is the main man. "He is still captain of this team and always will be captain of this team," says the coach. "I'm just sorry he isn't wearing No. 8 out on the ice."

As is Olson "When I first walked into the locker room at the first game and saw every one dressed and ready to go. I almost cried, It was really sad."

Those of us who have been privileged to witness the spectacular on ice feats of Greg Olson for three-and-a-hall seasons, and to know him as a person as well, are sorry, too.