M. Hockey's Crothers Attempts To Fill Jonas' Big Shoes

For Harvard Coach Mark Mazzoleni, the honeymoon in net is over.

When the third-year coach took over the Harvard hockey program in 1999, he inherited two top-flight, upperclass goaltenders. The first, J.R. Prestifilippo ’00, was a four-year starter who finished his career second on Harvard’s all-time saves list. The second, Olivar Jonas ’01, turned in one of the best single seasons in Harvard history last year, winning the Ken Dryden Award as the ECAC’s best netminder in the process.

This season, Mazzoleni no longer has the luxury of starting a senior. Heck, before last weekend, he didn’t even have the option of playing someone with two games’ experience. Going into the team’s season opener against Brown, this year’s Crimson roster sported two goalies who had yet to play a game and one—sophomore Will Crothers, the team’s likely starter—who had played a grand total of four periods (80 minutes).

For a coach who believes that teams are built from the goal out, this is a slight problem.

“Correlate that to your point guard in basketball only having played 80 minutes. Or your quarterback in football,” Mazzoleni said.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When Mazzoleni brought Crothers in last year, he expected to play him right away. After sitting on the bench for three years behind Prestifilippo, Jonas was a bit of a question mark himself. And Crothers— who played junior hockey in Canada with the Aurora Tigers, where he was teammates with Harvard forward Dominic Moore—was a highly-touted young backstop.

“We expected to play Will a third to a quarter of the games last year to get his feet wet,” Mazzoleni said. “But Oliver Jonas shot out of the blocks like a cannon. From day one, he played so well for us that there wasn’t a lot of decision to be made.”

Jonas was, to say the least, a rock, setting records for most minutes played and most saves made in a season. Playing behind a young and error-prone defensive unit, Jonas was tested time and time again and invariably rose to the occasion. He made 35 saves or more in nearly a third of Harvard’s games. On some nights, it seemed that he literally won the game by himself.

“I’ve said it before—our ability to have a winning record last year was in a great amount due to the quality goaltending that we had,” Mazzoleni said. “Jonas stole games for us, no doubt about it.”

Not many people were expecting Jonas’ incredible season-long performance. Except, perhaps, for Crothers.

“When I came into camp and saw how good [Jonas] was, then I wasn’t surprised,” Crothers said.

With Jonas stealing the show, Crothers only played one full game, a Dec. 7 meeting with Brown. It was a fairly painless initiation—last Saturday’s loss to Brown notwithstanding, the Bears were the worst team in the ECAC last year. Crothers turned in a respectable performance in his collegiate debut, making 22 saves in a 5-3 win.

Over the course of the season, Crothers and Jonas became pretty good friends. Jonas was paired with Crothers in the team’s Big Brother program and the two also roomed together on the road. Along the way, Jonas also passed on a few tips to his protege.

“He showed me some things about stick positioning and keeping an upright stance,” Crothers said.

Now that the torch has been passed, Crothers has been thrown into much the same fire as Jonas was. With the exception of senior captain Pete Capouch, Harvard’s blueliners remain a fuzzy-cheeked group. Of the seven of them, three are freshmen and three are sophomores. As Mazzoleni warns, “They’re going to make mistakes.”

It would be unfair, of course, to expect Crothers to carry the defensive load like Jonas did last year. After all, he is no older than the defensemen playing in front of him. But Crothers isn’t about to let himself off the hook.

“There are those that would say if I’d played more last season, it would’ve helped. But I don’t want to use inexperience as an excuse,” Crothers said. “It doesn’t mean you can’t be very good. It just means you can’t even better with more experience.”

Mazzoleni believes Crothers has been well served just by watching Jonas last year.

“The one thing about Will, he’s a real bright kid,” Mazzoleni said. “Just sitting on the bench and watching can make a big difference. He travelled to every rink, so he knows every building we played in. He knows what it takes from watching Jonas. He’s worked extremely hard since the conclusion of last year’s season.”

Crothers agrees that, in the long run, he benefitted from the events of last season.

“I came away with the desire to get stronger and get ready for this year,” he says. “I realized it’s a lot more fun when you’re playing than when you’re not. I worked hard this summer to make sure I would be playing.”

Crothers isn’t kidding about the work he has put it in. Over the summer, he religiously followed the Crimson’s strict diet program and workout regime. And during this past preseason, he spent a lot of time watching game film. He finds it can be a valuable tool.

“If I’m watching myself, I can see my tendencies, like if I’m getting up on the wrong leg or if my head’s not up when I’m playing the puck,”he says.

Crothers’ dedication has not gone unnoticed by Mazzoleni. The Harvard coach has given Crothers the starting nod over some very capable competition in freshman Dov Grumet-Morris.

Playing for the Danville Wings of the North American Hockey League last season, Grumet-Morris finished the year with the best save percentage in the league. Grumet-Morris—whose sister, Aviva, plays defense for the Princeton women’s hockey team—is a talent in his own right and will almost certainly challenge Crothers for playing time.

That fact does not bother Crothers, however.

“I try not to think about the other goalies too much,” he says. “I cheer for them when they’re on the ice. But that’s it.”

As the season progresses, Mazzoleni may indeed face a tough decision between Crothers and Grumet-Morris. They may also end up getting platooned. Last week, even though Mazzoleni had tabbed Crothers as his goaltender for Saturday, he refrained from definitely naming him thestarter for Sunday until after the Brown game.

Still, it does seem that Mazzoleni will at least give Crothers the benefit of the doubt.

“I think Will’s ready to play,” Mazzoleni said. “We didn’t recruit him to sit on the bench.”

And that only makes sense. His inexperience aside, Crothers has plenty to offer. A true athlete, the 6’2 Crothers can dunk a basketball. His father, Bill, is a former Olympic runner who won a silver medal in the 800 meters in 1964.

Mazzoleni, himself a former goaltender while at Michigan State, believes theat type of agility serves Crothers well in goal.

“Will has the best vertical jump on the team,” Mazzoleni said. “He’s very explosive. That’s a tremendous asset for a goaltender. Goaltending is a game of transition.”

While he knows he has a lot of work to do, Crothers believes he and his defensemen are making progress.

“We’re definitely improving on our communication with each other,” he says.

And don’t underestimate the steadying presence of Capouch, who plays nearly half of every Harvard game. Crothers has already learned a good rule of thumb for when he’s out on the ice—when in doubt, consult the captain.

“Whenever I have any questions about what I’m supposed to do, he’s a good

person to ask,” Crothers says of Capouch. “He lets me know when I’m not doing something the way he wants it done.”

In Crothers’ first test of the season, the results were a bit of a mixed bag. The Bears aren’t quite the pushover they once were, and on that particular night, they got the better of Harvard, 4-2. Crothers made 21 stops.

It was a decent first effort and one that Crothers can improve on. On Sunday night against Dartmouth, he did. Save for two power-play Dartmouth goals, Crothers (26 saves) largely succeeded in frustrating the Big Green attack.

The lesson taken from the weekend split was this—Crothers, and Harvard, are young; but they will keep getting better.

It is, you should remember, a long season. And while the Harvard hockey legions may have visions of regular season titles and NCAA tournament bids dancing through their heads, the even-keeled Crothers has a much more basic goal in mind.

“If I can look myself in the eye and say I did my best, I’ll be happy,” he says.