Reese Makes Sophomore Campaign Count

Dylan Reese is a take-no-crap defenseman with a nose for the net. Sound familiar?

How about this one: Dylan Reese came to Cambridge a highly touted prospect, and he has enjoyed an exceptional sophomore campaign. Still not familiar?

Then try this one: Dylan Reese, in just his second season on the Harvard men’s hockey team, has emerged as an evident leader. If that’s not ringing any bells, glance two spots down the numerical roster and you’ll find Noah Welch, the Crimson’s captain.

Reese and Welch have their differences—the most marked of which is apparent as the 6’1 sophomore and the 6’4 senior stand side by side—but the overarching connections remain nevertheless undeniable.

“It’s his personality,” explains Welch, the admitted owner of a fairly sizeable personality himself. “Dylan’s got a lot of confidence. He’s not a cocky kid, but he’s a pretty confident kid, and he’s a leader. In those qualities, I thought, I saw a lot of myself this year.”

And they were just the qualities Reese needed if he planned to discard memories of last season’s lingering nerve injury that sidelined the then-rookie for 15 games.

“I kind of wrote my freshman year off, personally, as just a bad year,” Reese says.

But as bad as it was for the Pittsburgh product, who spent all of December and January out of commission, it was worse for the Crimson, which went 5-9-1 during that stretch.

And while the floundering Crimson wasn’t grabbing any headlines, another of Reese’s squads was making national news.

Just after the New Year, the World Junior Championships were decided in Helsinki, Finland, and for the first time in its history, Team USA (for which Reese was selected, but for which he was too injured to skate) captured the gold.

“For a kid 18 to 20,” said then-coach Mark Mazzoleni of Reese’s selection, “this is like making the Olympics.”

But there would be no gold medal celebration for Reese, who could only read about the miraculous comeback from a third-period, 3-1 deficit in the championship game.

“Last year was rough,” Reese admits, “being hurt and missing the World Juniors and, I felt, never really establishing myself as a player that was always in the lineup and making an impact.”

His comrades on the ice would take issue with that last phrase, though.

“When he came back from his injury, he was, immediately, an impact player,” says Dave McCulloch ’04, who was paired with Reese for last season’s final eight games and miraculous playoff run.

“He came back,” McCulloch adds, “and I think he stepped in and made a difference right away for our team.”

Reese earned four assists during Harvard’s postseason streak, and in the team’s final game—in the NCAA tournament’s round of 16, against eventual runner-up Maine—Reese knocked home the Crimson’s first goal, a power-play strike 17:01 through the first period.

Not bad for a skater who had missed a sizeable chunk of his first collegiate season.

In fact, when questioned about Reese’s layoff, assistant captain Ryan Lannon says, “The fact that you just said he missed 15 games surprised me, because I don’t ever remember him missing a step.

“That’s a credit to him as a player,” adds Lannon, who has been Reese’s defensive partner for nearly all of this season, “to his work ethic off the ice...but also to the talent level that he has, where he can miss 15 games and come back and not look too rusty—come back at the end of the season, when the pace of the game is at its peak, and still fit in and be an integral part of our success.”

In any case, Reese says he wanted a “fresh start,”—one made possible by the fact that the sophomore has remained healthy this entire season.

And Harvard, meanwhile, is still collecting the dividends.

Reese currently sits atop the Crimson’s list of scoring defenseman with seven goals and 12 assists—Welch is second with six goals and 12 assists—and, like the captain, Reese has become something of a menace on the power play.

“He’s got a great shot,” Welch says, “and he’s been using it a lot more. I think he’s been getting a couple shots on net a game, and a lot of the scoring opportunities and chances.”

Officially, Reese is three inches shorter and seven pounds lighter than Welch—on the ice, though, this disparity appears greater, and it create the most glaring difference between the pair’s game styles.

Reese easily admits that he cannot play the physical game to the extent that Welch can, simply because Welch is “bigger and stronger.”

But while “Welchy has the size that Dylan doesn’t,” Lannon says, “Dylan makes up for it with his speed and just the hockey-sense that he has to keep himself in position. He doesn’t necessarily always have to out-muscle guys, but he still doesn’t get beat off the puck or [in the corner] very often.”

And beneath the flashy numbers and the gritty offensive instincts lies another similarity: the two are, first and foremost, blueliners.

“People look at their offense so much, and the points they put up and their ability to run the power play, that they forget that they’re still defensemen,” Lannon says.

“It’s nice to have that offensive ability,” Lannon adds, “but sometimes, as a defenseman, it’s still nice to be recognized [for being] able to shut guys down, as well. They both have that ability.”

Lannon may look for Reese on a breakout pass, but he can also look to Reese for muscle in the defensive zone.

“He more than holds his own,” Lannon says.

And with this year’s success—on both ends of the ice—has come an increasingly visible leadership role for Reese, who admits that he “would love to be the captain of Harvard hockey sometime.”

Crimson coach Ted Donato ’91 says that Reese plays “with a little boy’s enthusiasm, and he plays with a willingness to go into the lion’s den a little bit,” adding, “that’s a characteristic most great players have.”

It’s a characteristic equally evident in Welch, who established himself as a future captain early in his Harvard career.

The two are travel partners, roommates on the road, and Reese says that “it’s strange, the little things that we do the same, and how we get along.”

“I’ve just learned so much from him in two years,” Reese says. “He’s a guy that’s been through it, and he’s an unbelievable player—probably the best defenseman in the country.

“It’s good to have a guy like that that you can kind of mimic.”

On and off the ice.

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