Jonnie on the Spot: Depth Key For M. Hockey

When John Ronan scored the overtime-winner to give Maine a 4-3 victory over the Harvard men’s hockey team in last year’s NCAA East Regional, a buzz went along press row at the Worcester Centrum.

Who the heck is John Ronan?

The Maine media knew who he was. “Yeah, Ronan,” they said. “Fourth-line wing…from Braintree, Mass.…doesn’t score much.”

And they were right. Most games, Ronan wasn’t on the ice for offensive reasons. But that March afternoon, the Black Bears were without 46-point scorer Colin Shields because of an adverse reaction to medication for a sore tooth. Bizarre as it was, someone had to step up and Ronan did.

“They had their fourth line out ‘X’ amount of times and we didn’t do that,” Harvard coach Mark Mazzoleni said in the press conference afterward. “Adding another class to our team next year will help us immensely as to the overall depth of our program.”

One year later, that statement is ringing as true as a slap shot off the post.

The Crimson swept Vermont this weekend to advance to the ECAC semifinals for the third consecutive season, and its depth was a big reason why.

Harvard took Game 1, 4-2, without a goal from junior Tim Pettit, captain Dominic Moore or senior Brett Nowak—three players who are among the top four scorers in the ECAC—or from other offensive standouts like sophomores Tom Cavanagh and Noah Welch.

Instead, all of the scoring came from Kenny Turano and Dennis Packard, two junior forwards playing their best hockey of the season—if not their careers.

Turano began the two-man show by one-timing a feed from Cavanagh 3:41 into the game, giving the Crimson its all-important 1-0 lead. (Harvard is now 19-1-1 when scoring first.)

The goal was Turano’s first on the power play in over two years, dating back to Game 1 of the 2001 opening round series with Yale. Turano had found a niche during the final weeks of the season playing on a line with Nowak and Harry Schwefel ’01 and finished with 13 points, including eight over the final eight games.

Turano seemed poised for even more production last season, but it didn’t come. With Schwefel having graduated and Nowak skating on a different line, Turano struggled to get ice time and finished the year with two points.

This season didn’t start off much better. With increased depth at forward thanks to freshmen Charlie Johnson and Dan Murphy, Turano found himself in and out of the lineup for much of the first half. But after missing four straight, he dressed for the Dec. 15 game at Maine. Sure enough, he got a goal. Later in the game, he broke a finger. He didn’t play for another month and a half.

“That injury slowed things down a bit,” Turano said. “Just being out and watching from the stands made me appreciate it more. You get a different perspective on what you have to do.”

Turano brought that perspective with him when he skated in the first game after exams, a 3-1 win over Brown, and he hasn’t watched a game in coat and tie since. He had two assists in his second game back and has looked very comfortable playing on a line with Moore and Johnson.

“Coach was shuffling his lines and he gave me a chance,” said Turano, who Mazzoleni called the “quickest release on the team, along with Pettit”—high praise considering Pettit’s is widely regarded as one of the nation’s best. “My goal is to play physical. That’s what Coach wants from me, because it makes space for other people. I play with two very skilled players. If I can get open, they’ll find me.

“To get guys like myself involved, who aren’t going to score a lot, gives us that much more depth.”

There’s the word again. Depth. And after Turano’s goal, Dennis Packard was Depth personified.

Packard finished with a hat trick—“My first since pee-wees,” he said—that came as a surprise to the 1,522 at Bright Hockey Center, since a three-goal outing is something that usually happens in these parts only on nights when Moore’s slap shot has a little extra sauce on it.

But Pac-Man was looking an awful lot like Super Mario on Friday, and even Lemieux could’ve been proud of the results.

Packard used his 6’5, 225-pound frame to rush the net and hammer home a feed from Nowak at 14:11 of the second, score a breakaway goal and complete the trickery in the third to give the Crimson a critical insurance goal.

Like Turano, Packard is only now shaking off the effects of an injury–in his case, a broken hand.

“I’ve been building up my strength,” said Packard, who entered the weekend with 11 points but was a 20-point man last year. “It’s finally feeling good now.”

That seems to be a blanket statement for Harvard’s offense. After all, Packard and Turano weren’t alone last weekend.

With sophomore winger Brendan Bernakevitch out both games (hip) and junior Tyler Kolarik gone after the second period of Game 1 (shoulder), Mazzoleni was forced to adjust on the fly, double-shifting both Fried and Turano and changing his lines so often on Friday night you would’ve thought he had a Powerball hopper behind the bench. (‘OK, we’ve got 7…and 17…and 12. That’s Fried-Moore-Turano!’)

Without Kolarik in Game 2, Harvard’s depth was even more critical. Senior fourth-liner Aaron Kim assisted on a goal by Fried, while sophomore Rob Flynn played well in place of Kolarik on the top line. Murphy moved up from the fourth line and kept up with Pettit and Cavanagh, exchanging tape-to-tape passes with the Crimson’s great playmaking pair, and Johnson played one of his best games yet, scoring on a one-timer from Moore in the first.

“I tell you, Charlie Johnson is going to be one heck of a player,” Moore said.

It might not be an exaggeration to take Moore’s statement a step further and say that Johnson already is—along with Turano, Packard, Fried, Murphy and the others who are, in the words of Mazzoleni, “guys you don’t usually see on the score sheet.”

And as John Ronan would tell you, what “usually” happens isn’t always what does happen—especially not at this time of year.

—Staff writer Jon Paul Morosi can be reached at morosi@fas.harvard.edu.