Taking it For Granted in the Net

Part One of Two

Harvard men's hockey goalie Grant Blair has set almost every conceivable Crimson record en route to a four-year record of 68-31-5.

Not bad for someone who says he doesn't even like hockey very much.

"My favorite sport has always been baseball," Blair says. "I never watch hockey on t.v., and I never really go to any hockey games, but I always go to baseball games and watch baseball on t.v.

"I always wanted to be a baseball player."

While Blair may get a chance to earn his living with a quick glove and rapid reflexes, he'll have a stick, not a bat in his hand. He'll be wearing a flashy Calgary Flames jersey, not demure Yankee pinstripes. And he'll be towing ice, not sod.

"I quit playing baseball when I was 17," Blair recalls. "We got to the provincial championships in hockey, got beat in the finals and I got hurt the next winter. I went to the doctor and he pretty well said you have to make a decision--your back won't really handle it. And I chose hockey."

Although he was a pitcher and shortstop ("because I always like to be involved in the game like the goalie") for a powerful local baseball entry, Blair laid down his fielder's mitt and bat forever.

"I never really thought of becoming a baseball player," Blair says. "You can't be a great baseball player coming from Canada. I just played the sport because I liked it so much and I played hockey because I thought I had a chance of going somewhere."

His father thinks that troubles in the batter's box, in addition to the growing prowess at hockey, had a hand in the decision. "His weakness was hitting; he wasn't a power hitter," Matthew Blair says. "He was a crummy hitter."

But the younger Blair's determination to concentrate on hockey for the future didn't mean his devotion to that sport grew any greater--or his devotion to baseball any smaller. "He was always busy....I wished he would sit down and watch hockey with me," Matthew Blair says.

Ever since he started playing hockey at the age of five, Blair had been giving it his all. After putting in two years as a defenseman on the community all-star team, he decided to switch to playing goal.

"I just like it more or less because it was the most important part of the team," Blair says. "You're always involved. You're always on the ice, and when you're a little kid, you always want to be on the ice."

When he tried to move to playing net, the coach told him he couldn't make the team at that position. But Blair stuck out a year in the house (regular) league--and a year later he was the new all-star goalie.

"I was just looking at those funny old pictures," Matthew Blair, who works in commercial real estate, remembers. "He's there with glasses and the big pads. He was always so serious. He got the key to the rink and he'd get me up early about 5 a.m. and go to the rink and I would take shots on him until the other kids got there. One time he got me up at 4:30 and that was it."

Growing up in Stoney Creek, Ont., a small community on the outskirts of Hamilton, Blair soon found his hockey skills in demand.

When he reached the age of 15, Blair joined the Stoney Creek junior team, which plays at the junior C level. Canadian amateur hockey has four levels of juniors: junior C the lowest, junior B, Tier II junior A and Tier I (major) junior A.

Players in Tier I are often very high NHL draft picks and have usually foregone higher education to play at that level. Tier II junior A is played at a slightly lower level, and involves far fewer drafted players. Many players in Tier II, however, go on to play collegiate hockey in the United States and Canada.

"I got to the point where I just turned 15 years old, just played my first year of junior hockey in Canada, and that's pretty good...At that point in time I had a feeling I could make something out of myself. My coach said I was fairly talented and I had a chance to be drafted into the major junior A...I thought maybe I had a chance to go to major junior A or maybe come to college."

Blair, as it turned out, was not selected in the major junior A draft and signed on the following season with Burlington in Junior B. Playing in almost every game, Blair guided his squad to the provincial championships with a 3.47 g.a.a.

And after the season ended, he was selected in the seventh round of the major junior A draft.

Rather than head to the major junior A team, however, Blair chose college--and thus a Tier II junior A club for his final year in high school. He turned down Hamilton, his local squad, and moved to Guelph, Ont., to play with one of the most highly regarded junior A clubs in Canada.

Blair's Guelph Holiday Platers junior A team was marvelous (40-4-6 regular season, 23-6 post-season) but eventually lost the All-Canadian finals in four straight.

"Grant had an outstanding season leading us to the Canadian national finals," Guelph Coach Don McKee--now the coach at Waterloo University--says. "He was an integral part of the cohesion on the team."

Blair recorded a 3.18 g.a.a. during the regular season, and cut that mark to 2.90 in the playoffs.

"He was a hockey player with identified potential who was approached many times by Brantford [a major junior A team]," McKee adds. "Grant was very serious. Early in his teens he had his path drawn where he was going to go."

Although Blair split time with Wayne McDougall, the other Plater goaltender, McKee made sure Blair played against the more competitive of the two teams the Platers faced on trips.

"We kind of complemented each other," says McDougall, now a senior at Union College in ECAC Division II. "His style is more flashy, he likes to kick up and he's one of the toughest goalies I've ever seen. I was more laid back, more mellow.

"They expected a lot from us. We had a super team. He had great consistency. And his flashiness in style kept the fans and our team in the game."

As the Platers made their run through the playoffs, the college scouts--who had been pursuing Blair furiously--began closing in.

"My basic priority was to play right away when I got to college," Blair says.

Down in Cambridge, the Crimson was enjoying its last year with senior goaltender Wade Lau, and was searching desperately for someone to fill his spot on a young team that advanced to the NCAA Tournament.

"The big thing we had to stress was the definite need for a goaltender to take charge," said Val Belmonte, the Harvard assistant coach who recruited Blair and now coaches at Illinois-Chicago.

For Belmonte, spotting Blair was easy. "Certain players catch your eye. They have the type of oomph you like to see in a goaltender. I saw him against Richmond Hill in November around Thanksgiving.

"We paid attention to him," Belmonte says. "In May, I was up in Prince Albert. We had a sincere interest in him. I called Bill [Harvard Coach Cleary] after I learned about him and said, `I got the one for us.'"

"At times he got penalties, but I saw that as a positive, not a negative. If you're a goaltender, it's not that good to be passive."

Among the many other teams courting Blair was Cornell. The Big Red wanted a netminder to sit a single season behind its starter, Darren Eliot, and then play for three years.

Cornell Coach Lou-Reycroft came to Blair's house in Stoney Creek.

Reycroft was making a last bid to get the highly touted goalie into a Big Red jersey for four years.

"I thought he'd be a tough recruit," Reycroft says. "Harvard was graduating both of their varsity goalies and we had our starting goalie coming back."

That afternoon Reycroft told Blair, "If you go to Harvard, you'll never make it to the NHL."

"That was his mistake," recalls the Crimson's senior netminder.

"I think an hour after he said that I called him and said, `Well Lou, I'm going to see if I can make the NHL through Harvard.'"

Has he looked back after that decision? Part Two tomorrow