Breaking Through

Entering this, his senior season on the Harvard men’s hockey team, Andrew Lederman had scored one goal.

One.

Day after day, week after week, season after season had ticked away, and Lederman had played only 51 games, accumulating just 11 points.

But times have changed.

This season, Lederman needed only two contests to match his career goal total, and now, after skating in 11 games, he has tallied four.

He has amassed 10 points thus far. That’s already three more than his season-high, which he acquired as a freshman—which was, coincidentally, the last time Lederman ever really saw consistent ice time.

Following his 30-game rookie year, the Toronto, Ont., native saw his chances steadily decrease, skating in just 14 contests his sophomore campaign and only seven last year.

“It was tough,” Lederman admitted. “A lot of ups and downs.”

It’s all ups now, though.

Along with captain Noah Welch, assistant captain Tom Cavanagh, forward Brendan Bernakevitch and freshman Jon Pelle, Lederman is a fixture on the Crimson’s top power-play unit. The first three were established offensive powerhouses entering the season, and the attention they drew from opposing teams’ penalty kills was enough to give Lederman anonymity and freedom on the ice.

Now, with nine man-advantage points to his name, Lederman is anonymous no longer.

“We weren’t supposed to be the guys scoring,” Lederman laughed of his and Pelle’s success. “It was supposed to be Noah, Cav and Bernie.”

The senior has blended equally seamlessly into Harvard’s second line with Pelle and junior Charlie Johnson. If you watched the trio in action, you’d believe it had been together for ages.

But that, of course, would mean that Lederman had been seeing regular shifts for ages—and he hadn’t.

“There were times when there were little inklings of confidence that I could try to build on,” he said of his first thee years with the Crimson, “but lots of times, I didn’t get the opportunities that I wanted.”

But now?

“I’ve been getting an opportunity that I haven’t really gotten since I’ve been here,” he said thoughtfully. “So I think that finally having my coach showing some confidence in me is a big deal.”

This year, Ted Donato ’91 began his rookie season as Harvard skipper with a wide-open door, ready to apportion ice time for those who earned it before his eyes—not those who had been given it in previous years.

“I just wanted to let him know that in my mind, it was a fresh start,” said Donato at the beginning of the season, “that he could be kind of a hidden gem for us if he could catch lightning in a bottle and be able to showcase his skills for us.”

The coach was frank, however, cautioning Lederman that the senior’s time to adapt was limited.

“I wanted to provide him an opportunity,” Donato explained, “but I also was very honest with him, and I said that it was something that I wasn’t able to afford, as coach, to let go a long time.”

With nine incoming freshmen, six of whom were forwards, Donato couldn’t clog a precious spot on the line charts and wait for Lederman to turn the corner—which, of course, the Canadian might never do.

“If he were a freshman or a sophomore, he would have a little more running room,” said Donato. “But since he’s a senior, he needed to run with it right away.”

And he did. But why now, his last Harvard season? Why didn’t Mark Mazzoleni, the Crimson’s coach from 1999 to 2004, play the skater whom he deemed “one of the more offensively skilled players” on the team?

Nobody is quite willing to answer that one explicitly.

“I think a lot of it is maturity,” assistant captain Ryan Lannon offered. “[Lederman] definitely had a tough time stepping into the lineup as more of a skilled guy and trying to make his impact known [in previous years].”

Sean McCann ’94, now an assistant to Donato and the only current coach who also worked with Mazzoleni, was equally diplomatic.

“Sometimes,” he said, “you tend to get stuck in a position...and with a new coaching staff, the door is open.”

Mazzoleni himself cannot explain the change that has led to Lederman’s success.

“That’s hard for me,” he said, “because I haven’t seen him play this year.

“I do know that at the beginning of this year, he wasn’t playing,” he said, referencing the Crimson’s first two games, for which the winger did not dress.

“So he must have changed something.”

And however you explain that change—for the accounts of those who have watched Lederman over the years certainly differ—there’s no denying that the change has, indeed, occurred.

Said Lannon, “He’s always been skilled. He’s always been a talented guy. But he came back this year with just a different mindset.”

And Lannon wasn’t the only one to notice. The assistant captain mentioned that, just the other week, former teammate Kenny Turano ’04 had called to chat, “and the first thing he said, he goes, ‘What happened to Ledzy? What’s going on with him?’”

Finally, Lederman is showcasing his offensive potential. And though it is late in the game, the senior says that “it’s definitely fun. You try not to get too caught up in it, but it’s pretty exciting.”

Said Donato, “In talking to some of his teammates, [I knew] there were some obvious skills that were not being utilized. He’s a very talented, skilled player [and], for whatever reason, things weren’t coming together so far in his college career.”

But they’re coming together now, and better late than never, right?

—Staff writer Rebecca A. Seesel can be reached at seesel@fas.havard.edu.