Icemen Face New York Underdogs

When the Harvard men's hockey team faces off against Colgate Friday and Cornell Saturday at Bright Hockey Center, it has only one thing to fear.

Complacency. The monster that transforms sure-wins into incomprehensible losses. It rears its ugly head when one team truly believes that it cannot lose.

And when the Crimson (5-1-1 overall, 5-0-1 ECAC) looks at its competition coming this weekend, it's looking right into the eyes of the monster.

Colgate (1-6-1 overall, 0-4-0 ECAC) and Cornell (1-3-1 overall, 1-2-1 ECAC) are bad.

The Red Raiders are last in the league. Their first win came against powerless York (who?), 7-3.

The Big Red has won only once. That was on opening-day against Princeton.

Together, the Red Plagues from New York have a collective league record of 1-6-1. That's how bad they are.

Scoring Problems

The problem for both teams is simple: they can't score. In a total of eight ECAC games, Colgate and Cornell have combined for 20 goals and 32 assists. In just six games, the Crimson itself has tallied 16 more points than that (26 goals, 40 assists).

Neither the Red Raiders nor the Big Red have any players that come close to leading the league in scoring, while Harvard's Captain Ted Drury and seniors Matt Mallgrave and Steve Flomenhoft are all in the top 10.

"We haven't been scoring a lot," Colgate Coach Don Vaughan said. "We have to try to score some more goals. We know what we're getting into. We'll give them a good game."

A good game? Good luck. As if the team's scoring woes aren't enough, Colgate must play without its second leading scorer of 1991, junior Marcel Richard (18-27-45 in 1991-92), who is out for a month with mononucleosis.

And the Big Red's lone offensive weapon, senior Ryan Hughes, dished out only five assists and no goals this season.

More Physical Play

The two teams must depend then on their goalies and physical play if they hope to keep Harvard out of the game.

Red Raider netminders Shawn Murray and Matt Weder have collected 198 saves this season but have a 4.75 goals-against average.

With the departure of goalie Parris Duffus who signed a contract with the St. Louis Blues, Cornell has relied on sophomore Andy Bandurski who has made 165 saves with a 4.34 goals-against average.

"They'll probably play defensively and wait for us to make a mistake," Harvard Coach Ronn Tomassonni said.

The Crimson has not lost an ECAC game this season, and the team is coming off a 4-2 victory over Brown, what Tomassonni called "probably our best game of the season so far."

Cautious Crimson

It's very hard then to imagine the Crimson losing this weekend. But that's how complacency creeps into a team's skates, gloves and minds, a fact Harvard seems well prepared to deal with.

"When you play the record game, that's when you make a serious mistake," Tomassonni said.

Drury said that the Crimson knows that it must be cautious when it plays squads that are struggling. "We're making sure that we don't take any team lightly," Drury said.

Ticket Information: The Harvard Athletic Ticket office is making tickets for three upcoming men's hockey home games available on Monday, December 7 at 9:00 a.m.: Vermont on December 13, Dartmouth on December 18, and Boston College on January 3.

If you have any questions, call the office at 495-2121. It is located in the basement of Harvard Hall.