A Bad Day

PROVIDENCE, R.I.--We are the hollow men.

We are the stuffed men.

Headpiece filled with straw.

Yeah, it's T.S. Eliot, but it also describes the Harvard men's hockey team pretty well, if one game at Brown is anything to go on.

I stress "Harvard" because, well, the school is kind of noted for the intellectual character of its student body.

Alas, as academically smart as the average Harvard student is, common sense is often a department in which he or she lacks. And if Judge Ito would allow the stretch, I'd like to present Saturday night's action in Meehan Auditorium as Exhibit A.

Senior Steve Martins' advice after the game: "Just look at the scoresheet and see how many stupid penalties we took."

OK, Steve, I think I will. Coughlin, Holmes, Coughlin (again), Karmanos, McLaughlin, Konik, Marett, Martins, Halfnight--these are the "guilty as charged," in order of the penalties they committed that either gave Brown at least a one-man advantage or canceled a Harvard power play.

Notice how none of these players are freshmen. Funny, even if you extend the full roll call to include all the retaliatory hitting-after-the-whistle penalties and Brad Konik's five-minute cross-checking violation after the game's final whistle, the Class of 1998 had zero penalty minutes.

Which means that each of the evening's bad boys had heard Coach Ronn Tomassoni's warnings about such misdeeds many, many, many (did I say many?) times before.

Granted, Brown is a team that has been called by some "one of the dirtiest in the league."

Bears' Coach Bob Gaudet is fond of using phrases like "it's a man's game out there," "guys putting their bodies on the line," "setting the tone," "playing physical when it counts." You'd almost think from listening to him that he was a general on the front line at Verdun in a past life, now coaxing his troops to execute just one more bayonet charge.

But playing Harvard, that has to be part of his job description. Year in, year out, the Crimson can outskate everyone else in the ECAC, and those other 11 teams know that it is suicidal to play the game on Harvard's terms.

Tomassoni also knows this: "There's a lot of physicalness in this game--but if you retaliate, you're the one who's going to get called," he said.

"And there were a lot of bad penalties out there, and people who take bad penalties are going to be benched, it's that simple," he added.

One might argue that some calls are worse than others, but Martins understands an essential truth of the game when he says, "Whether or not the calls are marginal, they did happen, and it's part of the game."

Harvard's skaters must not put themselves in position to let the zebras, blind or otherwise, decide their fate--it's that simple. And never, ever, EVER should their captain spend four of a game's first 11 minutes in the penalty box for unmatched minors.

"It's very frustrating, playing like that," acknowledged the skipper himself, senior Ben Coughlin. "One of our team goals was to take fewer penalty minutes this year--I didn't do a good job tonight, and it's something we've got to work on as a team...if we keep taking unnecessary penalties, we're going to kill ourselves."

Fortunately, one game is only a drop in the season's bucket. There's plenty of time and many other teams between now and the true pressure-chambers of February and March.

But unless Harvard can teach itself discipline--and quickly--there will be too many dispiriting results this year like Saturday night's. And given the Crimson's track record, I'm not sure that it can.