Born to (NCAA Tourney) Run

The Crimson has no Moore, but it certainly has no less.

After combining to score 92 points last season, Dominic Moore ’03 and Brett Nowak ’03 are now toiling in the American Hockey League, hoping The Call isn’t far away.

This season, the Harvard men’s hockey team will be different because of their absence. But it won’t necessarily be worse.“Dom and Brett were huge losses,” senior Tim Pettit said, “but we have a chance to be even more successful than we were with [them]. We are a lot deeper.”

The Crimson returns 20 lettermen from a team that finished with the school’s best record in a decade (22-10-2) and reached the first round of the NCAA tournament, where it lost to Boston University.

The strength of this season’s team is its experience. It’s anchored by eight seniors and seven juniors—a tightly-knit group that includes 14 players who stayed in Boston over the summer to train and play in summer hockey leagues.

“This is by far the closest group of kids we’ve ever had,” said Harvard coach Mark Mazzoleni, now in his fifth season.

And, as a result of the off-season work, it’s also the best-conditioned Harvard team in years.

“We’re in the best shape we’ve been in coming into a season,” captain Kenny Smith said.

Along with its cohesiveness, the Crimson begins the season as the consensus pick to finish first in the ECAC. Harvard received 10 of 12 first-place votes in the preseason coaches’ poll for a total of 120 points, the most earned by a team in four years.

The ranking doesn’t come as much of a surprise. Harvard’s roster boasts 12 NHL draft picks. Six of them are defensemen, and if Mazzoleni dresses them as a unit, opposing forwards will hop over the dasher, knowing that, no matter what, they’ll face two future pros.

On top of that, the team’s 15 upperclassmen represent the most players on any team in the nation to have made the NCAA tournament in each of the last two seasons.

“This is something we’ve been building [over] the last four years,” Mazzoleni said. “This hasn’t happened overnight. If you look at the preseason polls from the last four years...they progressively moved toward this team.”

The Coaches

Mazzoleni, 64-57-10 in his first four seasons at Harvard, begins the season with a 284-192-40 career mark. With this team’s talent, he’ll almost certainly get career win No. 300 this season.

Meanwhile, assistant coach Nate Leaman left this summer to fill the vacant head coaching position at Union (where he’s off to a 4-0-1 start). Gene Reilly, formerly a highly-regarded assistant coach in the AHL, has replaced him, joining Sean McCann ’94 on the Crimson coaching staff.

“Nate’s a helluva good coach, but Sean McCann is a helluva good coach and so is Gene,” Mazzoleni said. “I think that in my five years I’ve attracted not only very good coaches, but very good people, and we have that.

“We’re all happy for Leaman’s opportunity, but he’s on the other bench now.” Bruce Irving is returning for his second season with the program as a volunteer assistant and goaltending coach, while the team has added Joe Heydenburg as video coordinator.

The Captain

With Moore graduated, Smith (see feature, page 14) steps in as a capable captain.

“I think he’ll do a wonderful job,” Mazzoleni said. “A captain is only as good as the people under him, and he is extremely respected by his teammates.

“He’s earned their respect through hard work and his passion for Harvard hockey.” Smith, a third-round pick of the Edmonton Oilers in the 2001 NHL Entry Draft, is coming of a season in which he had career-highs in goals (four) and assists (11).

“He’s the guy who can lead on the ice and off the ice,” Moore said. “He’s just an all-around character guy that you can look to throughout the season as an example and for guidance.”

Freshmen

This isn’t a big freshman class, but by all accounts, it’s a good one.

Forwards Kevin Du, Ryan Maki and Steve Mandes, and defenseman Dylan Reese, will likely have different freshman seasons than this year’s seniors and juniors, who were counted on heavily as first-year players.

Two and three years ago, the Crimson was a young team. Now, it’s one of the nation’s most experienced.

So, it’s likely that the freshmen won’t fill major roles immediately—but that’s not to say they wouldn’t be able to.

“We’ve got four freshmen who are good players and very smart players, so we don’t have to spend a lot of time on the basics,” Smith said. “We’re already into the details.”

Reese is a candidate to play for the U.S. in this winter’s International Ice Hockey Federation World Junior Championships. He attended the team’s tryout camp in August and will be evaluated through the month of November, before the final roster is announced Dec. 2.

The Forwards

Moore and Nowak were big parts of Harvard’s offense (best in the ECAC last year), but don’t look for much of a scoring drop this season.

“We’ve had some guys that would have gotten the opportunity to play at other programs,” Mazzoleni said.

One of them is Tom Cavanagh (see feature, page 10), who is coming off a 14-goal, 27-point season. With more ice time, and an opportunity to play on the team’s first power play unit, Cavanagh has the potential to hit 40 or even 50 points.

“Those two guys scored a lot of goals last year,” Cavanagh said. “And we need people to fill those roles. I think that I can be one of those guys.”

Another key returnee is senior assistant captain Tyler Kolarik, who last year tied defenseman Noah Welch for fourth on the team’s scoring list with 28 points and led the team with four game-winning goals.

Sophomore Charlie Johnson, who shared last season’s Percy Award as team rookie of the year with Peter Hafner, should also improve on his 20-point output.

Fans can also expect more of senior forward Kenny Turano, who had 13 points as a freshman, two as a sophomore and 11 last year—including nine in the season’s last two months after returning from a wrist injury.

“He took his game back to where it was his first year,” Mazzoleni said. “He has probably the greatest ability to score goals around the net, with his quick release.”

The Defensemen

With all six regulars returning—along with heralded rookie Reese—Harvard’s defensive corps should be one of its deepest in years.

“Our D-corps is second to none in this country,” Smith said. “We have six guys who are extremely experienced players. We’re going to be a defense that punishes people who try and come into our zone but also makes good breakout passes.”The group is anchored by junior Noah Welch, a second-team All-American last year, when he scored six goals and assisted on 22 others for the third-highest point total in the conference among defensemen. “Welchie’s a tremendous player,” Smith said. “I think he can play at a higher level than last year. I saw him this summer, and he’s been working really hard...I think he’s going to surpass last season.” Smith is also expecting a big year from Hafner, a sophomore who was often paired with Welch last season.

“I think Pete is one of the best defensemen in the league, and I told him that in the tournament last year,” Smith said. “He plays the fundamentals of the game really well. He picks up things very quickly from the coaches, and they’re going to be using him to stop the other teams’ top lines this year.”

The Goaltenders

Junior Dov Grumet-Morris made his mark nationally last season, when he was ranked as high as second in the country in save percentage before finishing the year in fifth. His .925 mark was second-best in school history to Godfrey Wood ‘63.

This year, Mazzoleni expects Grumet-Morris to be pushed by sophomore John Daigneau, who was 4-1-0 with a 1.45 goals-against average in five games.

Grumet-Morris will draw the start in the season-opener versus Brown, but Daigneau will start one of the games on the team’s first road trip.

“John Daigneau has proven he deserves the opportunity to show what he can do,” Mazzoleni said.