Welch and Hafner Solid, PK Still Iffy

HANOVER, N.H.—After a season-opening performance in which the Harvard men’s hockey team seemed to struggle with every facet of the game, this weekend’s contests against Vermont and Dartmouth answered many questions about the Crimson, but also left many unanswered.

One thing that was clearly established was Harvard’s offense, which finally started to fire on all cylinders, tallying eight goals over two games. But uncertainty remains about Crimson’s penalty kill unit, which has been incredibly inefficient, and hurt all the more by the sheer quantity of penalties taken.

Amid the special teams frustrations, the play of Noah Welch and Peter Hafner against Dartmouth’s top forwards was a good sign, as was the play of freshman defender Dylan Reese.

Defensive Duo

Coming off a game against Vermont that he watched in street clothes, junior defenseman Noah Welch combined with sophomore linemate Peter Hafner to match up every shift against Dartmouth’s top line of forwards—Hugh Jessiman, Lee Stempniak and Mike Ouellette.

The strategy wasn’t unexpected; Dartmouth coach Bob Gaudet and Harvard coach Mark Mazzoleni mentioned how effective it was when Harvard deployed it’s two sizable defenseman against the Big Green’s top line.

“[Welch and Hafner], these are two good defensemen,” Gaudet said.  “They kinda matched them up against Hugh’s line last year, too.”

And over the four games that Mazzoleni has matched Welch and Hafner against that line, the Crimson defense has held Dartmouth’s top two scorers—Jessiman tallied 47 points last year in his ECAC Rookie of the Year season, while junior linemate Stempniak accumulated 49—in relative check.

“We tried the best we could to match our top defense against [Dartmouth’s best offense],” Mazzoleni said.  “[Gaudet] gets last change, so we could have him out there and he has the right to flip them….I don’t think Jessiman and that line has scored a goal on us in how long?  Two years? We’ve had some success with that matchup.”

Some success is right, although Mazzoleni is overestimating the extent of Welch and Hafner’s effectiveness against Dartmouth.  Over the course of the last four games, that forward line has accounted for five Dartmouth goals, but in the three meetings last year—all Harvard victories—those goals meant little.

Aside from the obvious effort to counter an opponent’s best players with your own, Welch and Hafner have physical advantages that many other defenders don’t.

Welch, the all-American, is a burly 6’4 defenseman who is very physical and yet quick on his feet. Hafner has started to hit more often this season, but his greatest asset is the reach afforded him by his lanky 6’5 frame and his on-ice footwork.

This combination of size, reach, strength and skating ability poses problems for Dartmouth. Jessiman, at 6’5 and a bulky 215 lbs., is used to being by far the biggest man on the ice; against Hafner and especially Welch, he is not able to physically move defensemen off the puck as he has grown accustomed to against many teams.

Likewise, Stempniak uses his speed and puck-handling ability to great effect against many defensive pairings. Against Welch and Hafner, though, he often has the puck stick-checked away before he is able to maneuver towards the net.

“Stempniak is a guy that seems to get free more easily with his skating ability,” Gaudet said.  “Hugh is such a big, tall kid that sometimes it’s tough to get going when people are on him like [Welch and Hafner].

“[Jessiman] didn’t have a whole lot of open opportunities, but those two are very good defensemen, and a good goalie, too.”

Missing Something

After a game against Brown that saw his team surrender two five-on-three advantages, Mazzoleni was irate at what he considered to be the stupid penalties some of his players took.

“We took some stupid penalties and then we lost our momentum,” Mazzoleni said after that game. “You shoot yourself in the foot when you go in the box. You shoot both feet off when you go two men down.”

But after a hard-hitting pair of games that saw his team chalk up another 30 minutes in the box, Mazzoleni wasn’t as aggravated, despite surrendering two power plays to the Big Green in the first five minutes of Saturday night’s game.

“You’re asking your guys to play aggressive,” he said.  “We could ask them to hang back and not take penalties, but we’re asking them to be aggressive and you have to leave it up to the discretion of the referees.”

But while this weekend’s penalties did not concern Mazzoleni, his team’s penalty kill (or lack thereof) was troubling. Against the Catamounts on Friday, Harvard allowed three goals in seven opportunities, and the Big Green was able to convert on one of its three advantages.

The primary cause of this penalty-killing problem seems to involve the adjustment period to a new style of play. With the departure of former assistant coach Nate Leaman to be head coach at Union and the arrival of Gene Reilly as Harvard’s new assistant coach, the players have had to adapt to a new approach and a new defensive scheme when down a man, a situation that is exacerbated by the amount of time Reilly has been on recruiting trips in the fall.

“Gene Reilly has just taken over our penalty kill….We’re just implementing his penalty kill,” Mazzoleni said. “And I think as the season goes along we’re going to get better at it.

“I have all the confidence in Gene, and I think we’re going to be one of the better teams in the league at killing penalties,” he continued.  “But right now we have to get better at what we’re doing.”

A Prominent Role

Mazzoleni, before the season began, placed a strong emphasis on the role he expects freshmen to play at the start of their first season at Harvard.  They should practice hard, come to play every day and think when they’re on the ice.

Oh, and they shouldn’t expect to play in critical situations, at least at first. The coach made clear that he wants to give his players a chance to develop and gain experience before tossing them into pressure situations like a power play or a penalty kill.

It was somewhat surprising, then, when Reese spent much of Friday night’s game against Vermont subbing for Welch on the team’s first power play unit. And his performance, while not directly visible in the box score, was praised by both Mazzoleni and Welch.

“I thought Dylan did a good job,” Mazzoleni said. “He’s the QB [of our power play] and that’s an awful lot to ask of an 18-year-old freshman. I thought he showed a lot of poise out there.”

Welch agreed, citing the way Reese recognized Vermont’s penalty kill defense—the Catamounts sagged off of sophomore Charlie Johnson playing in the middle and tried to heavily cover senior forward Tim Pettit to prevent his slap shots from the point.

“Different teams play our people different, most of the teams play off of Tim Pettit,” Welch said. “Pettit was kinda taken out of our power play, but I thought Dylan did a great job of selling the pass to Pettit and then getting it over to Charlie.”

It is doubtful that Reese will continue to see time with the first power play unit (he wasn’t on it during the Dartmouth game) but given his inexperience, his performance in a critical situation was impressive.

“He came in this year with a lot of confidence, he’s a skilled guy, he plays tough and gritty,” Welch said.  “He’s going to be in on all our [special teams] situations [eventually]. He’s an offensive defenseman and he’s got a lot of confidence, which is probably the most important thing coming in here as a freshman.”

—Staff writer Timothy M. McDonald can be reached at tmcdonal@fas.harvard.edu.