Lugano's Newest American Import

Home is Lugano, Switzerland, rather than Cambridge. The skates are laced up for games in the Swiss hockey league, rather than the ECAC. But for Lane MacDonald '88-'89, things haven't really changed that much.

At 11:30 p.m. Swiss time, he is plopped on a couch watching television in a room full of hockey players. He cannot find Alex Trebek's mug on the tube, but the faces around him are familiar. In for a visit are former teammates Andy Janfaza '88, Steve Armstrong '88 and Gerald Green '88.

"You caught me on a good day," MacDonald said in a recent interview. "The guys are all here--sometimes it almost feels like home."

MacDonald is playing hockey for Lugano, one of 10 Swiss teams in a top European hockey league. The team has captured the league championship two of the past three years and, seven weeks into this season, holds second place. MacDonald, who skates on the top line, has seven goals in his first 14 outings.

"We don't have any RPIs in this league," he said. "Here the game is a little different--more wide open, more skating."

That style is, of course, one of the main reasons the former Olympian chose Europe over a bigger-bucks offer from the Hartford Whalers. Harvard Coach Bill Cleary once called MacDonald the "best pure skating player" he had ever seen. In Switzerland, MacDonald gets a lot of room to do what he's best at--skate and score.

Cleary is part of the reason why MacDonald, and so many other Harvard hockey players, have chosen to play hockey in Europe. The style of play taught at Harvard is an international one; one much more reflective of Olympic, rather than NHL, hockey.

Janfaza also signed on with a European hockey program after graduation--he played first in an Austrian league and is now six hours south of Lugano and MacDonald, scoring goals on a team in France. Of the six seniors who played regularly for the 1988-89 championship Crimson, five signed with foreign programs last spring.

"Every now and then I think I'd like to play [in the NHL] just for the achievement of playing in the best league in the world," MacDonald said. "The money was better in Hartford, but I wasn't going to do well there unless I was ready for the 80-game grind. That's something that takes a commitment."

MacDonald has not closed himself off to playing in the NHL--and the Whalers would still like to see him in a blue-and-green uniform next season.

In Switzerland, MacDonald practices in double sessions and doubts he'll be able to come home before March--but he has Sundays free and has a chance to explore another part of the world. That, he feels, is a distinct advantage over the NHL.

It is not, however, one big European vacation. As an "import"--one of two American players allowed each European team--MacDonald is under a lot of pressure to produce. It's not a new situation for MacDonald: he's always felt a personal, if not an outside, push to succeed.

"If things aren't going too well, the team looks at either the coach or the imports to change things," he says.

While others may expect great things out of MacDonald, he himself expects perfection. Last season with the Crimson, he often questioned his contribution to the program. In the end, he came through with a 60-point season, a school-record career goal total and Harvard's third Hobey Baker award. When MacDonald packed for Switzerland, he didn't leave his trademark modesty at home.

"I should be scoring more," he says. "I haven't been getting too many breaks. Hopefully, I'll start putting the puck in the net...it's the same way I felt last year."

MacDonald started playing in early August and will finish up his contract in mid-March--just in time, as he says, to make it back to the States for college playoffs.

"I'd really like to see the guys play," he says, "but I must admit that, if I had picked it, I couldn't have chosen a better time to graduate."