Believe It or Not, Officials: Harvard Did Win

The Harvard men's hockey team won the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference this year with no coach and no players.

That, at least, is the consensus of ECAC coaches.

After passing over Harvard for individual player awards last week (Harvard joined pitiful Union and Dartmouth as the only teams with no players on the first or second team All-ECAC squads),the ECAC gurus again denied the Crimson the respect it deserves by rejecting Ronn Tomassoni as Coach of the Year yesterday.

Sure, awards aren't really what the season is all about. Every coach will tell you that.

And yes, Tale's Tim Taylor is a brilliant coach. With his outstanding performance this year, Taylor once again proved that he is arguably the best coach in college hockey, second only to Boston University's Jack Parker.

But we're talking about coach "of the year"--not coach of all time. Taylor did a great job, but he always does.

Tomassoni, in constrast, did an incredible job this year: He brought a team predicted to finish sixth in the division to first place, above both Clarkson and St. Lawrence, teams the pre-season pollsters picked for national dominance this year.

I'll be the first to admit that Taylor might be a better coach his players. Anyone who's ever seen Taylor in action attests to his unparalled hockey smarts and teaching finesse, his skill at molding young players.

But Tomassoni's achievement, this one year, is more impressive. He brought in one of the finest classes of recruits in the country and mapped out an arrangement of line to get the maximum production from both his veterans and newcomers.

The decision to deny Tomassoni, moreover, is logically indefensible.

Last week, the coaches concluded that not one Harvard player was a legitimate all-star. Not top-ranked goalie Allain Roy. Not rock-solid forward Steve Flomenhoft. Not high-powered defender Sean McCann. Not perennially-strong Captain Kevin Sneddon.

It is possible to explain away this snub (Harvard didn't have one scorer in the top 15.), but how then can the coach explain Harvard's first-place finish?

How did Tomassoni do it? Smoke? Mirrors? Black magic?

Yesterday's travesty does fit into a larger context. All year long, the college hockey world has looked down on Harvard. No national respect, and no player recognition.

Yes, the team was upset in the ECAC Quarterfinals, but a heck of a lot of good hockey came before that point. By not recognizing the outstanding work of both the Crimson's coach and players, the ECAC is overlooking one of the best success stories in the conference this year.

By their action (or non-action), they are saying that Harvard's success was a fluke, and that it didn't really matter. For that, conference officials should be ashamed of themselves.