Practice Makes Perfect

Peter Chiarelli said it best.

"It was exactly like practice."

Harvard's 11-0 victory over RPI, the defending ECAC and national champions, Saturday night at Bright Center resembled nothing so much as a two-hour drill.

"They backed off all night," Harvard Captain Scott Fusco, who recorded five assists during the festival and edged to within three helpouts of breaking the all-time Harvard assist mark of 127. "It was almost like they were trying to lose."

Fusco captured what was the most disconcerting thing about a really unnerving evening. The visitors seemed numb--like 21 wind-up red, white and silver mannequins oblivious of time and place.

Down four goals after the first period, RPI didn't choose to try to forecheck the Crimson. No pressure at all. The Engineers would often just skate down, toss the puck deep into the Harvard end and line up on the blue line.

Just like practice.

No RPI forwards would even break in and try to pick up the puck once they threw it in the zone. They just stood still like well-programmed robots at the blue line, waiting for Harvard to bring the biscuit back out.

And inevitably to put it in the back of the RPI net.

"I don't know what their coach was doing," Crimson goalie Grant Blair asked after posting two shutout periods and lowering his nation's best goals-against average to 2.69.

"It's hard to believe," said forward Tim Barakett, who scored two power play goals although he doesn't normally play on the power play. "They played awful and they were terribly coached."

Just disbelief. It was so lopsided.

All six goalies played in the whatever-it-was. Four--Blair, Dickie McEvoy and John Devin of Harvard as well as John (the 145-second wonder) Haley of RPI--were perfect and allowed no goals. Two--Brian Jopling and Tony Martino--were awful and gave up 11 goals in their 58 minutes of play before they yielded to Haley.

"I kept going `holy smokes,"' Harvard Coach Bill Cleary said. "I would just sit there and shake my head and say, `holy smokes."'

The Crimson was good, seizing every opportunity for two periods and the Crimson was lucky, watching every bounce go its way. All that has happened before.

But this time, the other team just didn't seem interested in fighting back.

At one particular point, the referee raised his arm to signal a penalty against the Crimson, and the RPI forwards--even as their goalie rushed to the bench to be replaced by an extra skater--dumped the puck into the Harvard zone and skated off for a line change, without even trying to convert the extra-man situation.

Holy smokes.

Smoke Signals

What was their message? Did RPI's loss to Dartmouth the night before--a defeat which cost the Troy team a chance at its third straight ECAC regular season crown--leave them so shellshocked?

Perhaps. Or were the Engineers acknowledging the changing of the guard in the conference: we're not as good as we were last year, and you, Harvard, are clearly the best in the ECAC, so what's the point.

Was it that predictable, that inevitable?

"We came into the game realizing that Harvard had the superior playing talent," RPI Coach Mike Addesa said. "We're a little thin the year and we're missing two of our best players.

"I said before the season started that Harvard was the best team in the country. I say that again."

The RPI mentor, who last year was talking about a trip to the NCAA Final Four in the middle of the regular season, has certainly changed his tune. Asked what it would take for his squad to win the ECAC Championship--read beat Harvard--at the post-season tournament, Addesa said, "You can pray for a lot of miracles and it would take a lot of miracles."

With the coach talking about divine intervention, and describing Harvard's destiny in the same well-scripted phrases he used a year ago to glorify his own team's 38-game unbeaten ride to a place in history, it isn't any wonder that his Engineers performed as they did Saturday night.

While Addesa was down on his knees, the players fell on their faces.