Four Fab Frosh Come Into Their Own, Provide Energy and Momentum for Playoff Push

There comes a time in any young hockey player’s life when he can pull on his skates and terrorize the ice with the knowledge that he has completely arrived.

For Harvard men’s hockey’s freshman corps, that time wasn’t this weekend’s two-and-done TKO of Vermont at Bright Hockey Center.

The Crimson’s four super-frosh—Kevin Du, Ryan Maki, Steve Mandes and Dylan Reese—are here, and they’ve been here for a while now. But after this weekend, anybody’d be crazy not to take notice.

“They’re exciting to watch,” said Harvard coach Mark Mazzoleni of the freshmen after Saturday night’s 5-3 clincher, not stopping to wait for agreement. “I know I enjoy watching them.”

The freshmen’s accomplishments against the Catamounts read like a laundry list of team-best stats and game highlights. But that fails to do justice to their constant weekend-long energy, enthusiasm and knack for being in the middle of seemingly every big play.

Reese, a hard-nosed defenseman from Pittsburgh with a flair for making hits, appears finally to be in full health after missing most of the season with a pinched nerve. He was among five Crimson players at a team-high +3 for the weekend. His fellow rookie, Maki, was another one.

A 6’3, 200-lb. forward from Michigan, Maki is light on his feet for a big man—“For a big guy, he moves very well,” Mazzoleni said—and equally deft on offense and on the penalty kill. But it’s his offense that has been raising eyebrows in recent days.

Maki’s goal in a 6-4 loss to Vermont on Feb. 27 was the first of his collegiate career. He added another the next day—a follow-up on a rebound off a Ryan Lannon slapshot—in the Crimson’s 4-0 regular season-ending victory over Dartmouth. But his goal Friday against the Catamounts—his third in three games—was the most impressive of all.

Vermont’s top two forwards—Jeff Miles and Brady Leisenring—skated in on a two-on-one charge into the Harvard defensive zone in the third period and as the lone defender between the Catamounts and the Harvard net, sophomore defenseman Peter Hafner managed to heist the puck and fed it forward to Maki on the break. Maki sped across the ice—pulling up on the right hand side in front of Catamounts goalie Travis Russell—and let loose a lightning shot that streaked past Russell’s left shoulder. At 11:06 in the third, the lamp lit as the puck rattled in and out of the net.

“The goal that he scored tonight was a real nice goal-scorers goal,” Mazzoleni said. “He put it up right over his glove.”

Maki’s goal was the snapshot Harvard fans would take home from Friday’s Game 1 win, but it also underscored the escalating number of chances for the right winger in recent days. His assist to Bernakevitch from behind the goal in Saturday’s game put Harvard on the scoreboard and gave it a lead it wouldn’t relinquish.

“Ryan Maki as a player,” Du said after Saturday’s win, “has been unbelievable the last few weeks.”

Du has been no slouch, himself. The smallest player on the team at a spry 5’8, and possibly the quickest, the center from Spruce Grove, Alberta is the freshman leader in goals scored with 6. His tally 1:40 into Friday’s game was the difference in the shutout, with linemate Mandes earning one of the assists.

All weekend, the Du-Mandes line, completed by assistant captain Tyler Kolarik, injected offense into the once-stagnant Harvard attack—an attack that had been the team’s Achilles’ heel in the early season.

“They create enthusiasm, just by how hard they play. They get a good tempo going out there,” Mazzoleni said. “That’s why the Kolarik-Du-Mandes line has been so effective.”

After Friday’s game, Kolarik—whose goal at 15:03 was his team-leading sixth career tally in the ECAC tournament—gave the credit to his freshman linemates.

“You know those guys, they just have big hearts,” Kolarik said. “Du and Mandes are just playing the game they’ve been playing all year. Smart. Intense. Just playing their style.”

Du and Mandes have also built some chemistry over the last few weeks, which bodes well for the distant future.

“We get along real well,” Mandes, a right wing from Doylestown, Pa, said of his rapport with Du. “I don’t know, we just have a good feel for each other. I think it might be one of those things where it keeps us together for awhile.”

How about four years? In the meantime, the three freshman forwards can concentrate on a little wager. It seems Du, Mandes and Maki have a running competition to see who can scrape out the most points before the end of the year.

For all you keeping score, that’s 9 for Du, 9 for Mandes and 7 for Maki. When asked whose chances he liked after Saturday’s game, Mandes broke into an ear-to-ear grin.

“I don’t know. Du’s a sniper,” he said. “But as long as I’m playing on his line, maybe I’m going to get an assist every time he scores. We’ll see.”

For the unlucky guys who end up paying for dinner, there’s plenty of solace to be found. On the ECAC’s biggest stage, all four freshmen of the Harvard hockey team have shown they’ve arrived.

Guess what? They aren’t going anywhere any time soon.

—Staff writer Alex McPhillips can be reached at rmcphill@fas.harvard.edu.