The Man Who Would Be Coach

Harvard’s equipment manager, Chet Stone, can’t come to the phone just now. He’ll be in tomorrow, but until then a message will have to do.

“What’s that you’re writing on?” the unidentified voice at the other end of the line inquires. “Ted Donato? Just one of the greatest guys you’ll ever meet.”

Like any number of athletes, when Donato was an undergraduate he’d work in the equipment room during the off-season to earn a little extra cash. He’d always been one of Stone’s favorites, but apparently Stone wasn’t the only one upon whom the young Dedham, Mass., product had left a favorable impression. Not even after 14 years.

“I just think the world of the guy,” says former captain Lane MacDonald ’89. “He’s just a terrific guy. I don’t think you can find anyone with whom or even against whom he played who didn’t like Teddy.”

“When we went to lunch or dinner, you wanted to sit at his table because you knew that when you left you’d have laughed the whole time,” adds former linemate Mike Vukonich ’91. “Teddy’s just a guy you want to be around. There aren’t a lot of guys like that.”

The attitude of the happy-go-lucky kid from Catholic Memorial was, in many ways, infectious, and those who knew him at all found it next to impossible not to cheer when he was one of the lucky contestants invited to come on down on “The Price Is Right”—even if they had been told ahead of time that the Showcase Showdown would ultimately not be his.

Of course, not many of his former teammates expected Donato to return to Cambridge to take the helm of his alma mater way back when. It’s the sort of thing you don’t really think about that far in advance, most say, though Vukonich couldn’t even imagine the Crimson without legendary coach Billy Cleary ’56 pacing behind the bench.

Now though? There’s no one those who know the program best would rather entrust it to.

“A lot of us look at him and say that he’s as close as one could get to Coach Cleary in terms of personality and passion for the game,” MacDonald says. “[But he’s also] very, very serious when it comes to game time and very few people can make that balance and also inspire their players.”

PRIME TIME PLAYER

With Harvard and Boston College deadlocked at three heading into overtime on Nov. 25, 1988, sophomore forward Ted Donato could barely contain his excitement. He prided himself on his clutch performances, and if he was off the ice with the game on the line, he’d get antsy.

“You couldn’t get him to stop talking,” MacDonald says. “He would always be talking, talking, talking. Sometimes he’d go on and on.”

On his third shift of that extra frame, Donato, skating with the Crimson’s formidable power-play unit after two trips out at even strength, finally had his chance. Allen Borbeau’s feed was perfect. The one-timer from the point sliced through the crease and snuck past Eagles’ goaltender Mike Mullowney to preserve Harvard’s thus-far perfect season.

But as his teammates poured over the boards to celebrate with him, Donato was lost in thought.

“We’re all going over to congratulate him,” MacDonald says. “And he’s just saying, “I’m a PTP’er! I’m a PTP’er! I’m a prime-time player! It was so Teddy, such a funny thing.”

“We were all cheering behind the net,” Vukonich adds. “And Teddy didn’t even want to hug any of us. He’s just standing there with his arms in the air, screaming, ‘PTP!’”

Of course, that year they were all prime-time players, destined to capture the Crimson’s lone NCAA championship. But even on a roster featuring two members of the 1988 United States Olympic team and the 1989 Hobey Baker winner, none elevated his game like Donato.

“He was a big game player,” MacDonald says. “The bigger the game, the better he played. Teddy loved the big games. He got himself up for the big games and he always produced.”

And that year, no two contests were bigger than Harvard’s pair in the Frozen Four. Donato’s contribution? A couple of assists and the game-winning goal against Michigan State in the semifinals, and two tallies against Minnesota in the championship. His reward? The tournament’s most outstanding player honors to complement his newly won title.

Though his junior and senior seasons wouldn’t net the same result, Donato never hesitated to embrace the increasingly steep share of the offensive burden that was heaped upon his and his linemates’ shoulders, particularly in his final year when he was both captain and a member of the first line. Then, as today, the top trio wore green jerseys when practicing, a coincidence not lost on Donato or his teammates.

“He’s a money kid,” netminder Chuckie Hughes ’92 told The Crimson in 1991. “He wears that green in practice with pride. When the pressure is on and the money is down, he’s the guy you want to go to.”

Of course, Hughes, who’d skated with Donato for three years at Catholic Memorial before attending Harvard, had merely been recycling a nickname he had not himself invented.

“Pete [Ciavaglia] and I never said that,” Vukonich says. “Who do you think came up with that? That was Teddy. He dubbed us the money line with the green jerseys. And that’s Teddy. Money player, money line.”

THE TOWEL BOY

Off the ice and in the equipment office, Donato wasn’t much different—just a whole lot more dangerous with a van at his disposal. Often tasked to deliver freshly laundered towels to the athletic facilities around campus, Donato quickly mastered the most direct routes between Soldier’s Field, the Malkin Athletic Center, and his various other destinations—much to the chagrin of his passengers.

“You don’t ever want to do a towel run with Ted Donato,” says Vermont coach and former Harvard defenseman Kevin Sneddon ’92. “He could do it in about 30 seconds and that involved going up on curbs. For me, being from a small town in Canada, I’d never seen driving like that.”

Ciavaglia and Vukonich had. Donato’s co-workers and fellow Kirkland House residents, the pair found themselves on the receiving end of more than one of the future Crimson coach’s pranks.

The proud owners of a new Volkswagen Rabbit they had purchased for 800 dollars, Ciavaglia and Vukonich happened to be leaving work one day, minding their own business, when Donato and his roommate, Scott Barringer ’91, thought they’d have a little fun with their friends.

“They took the van,” Vukonich says, “and gave us a good bump right into traffic and gave us a nice little dent in our car. They did that a couple of times.”

Which of course explains a second aspect of Donato’s legend across the River—the product of his penchant for disappearing on towel runs and returning with a van that wasn’t quite the van it used to be, on more than one occasion.

Of course, the athletics department’s vans weren’t alone in their suffering, nor were Ciavaglia and Vukonich.

On Mondays, the Crimson would end practice with a lighthearted scrimmage, in which the goaltenders would move up to forward and an unlucky pair of skaters would play between the pipes. With their inexperienced teammates in net, most would gingerly shoot low and opt for finesse over power.

But not Donato.

“Teddy would always get such a kick out of shooting the puck high on the regular goalies and even the usual goalies,” MacDonald says. “He just thought that was the funniest thing going. He’d always be shooting at the goalies. I think Chuckie Hughes could tell about 40 stories about Teddy hitting him in the head with the puck.”

In fact, so could current sophomore Justin Tobe, off whose facemask Donato plunked one of his shots earlier this season.

“I think the nice thing about Teddy is that he’s the same person and has remained the same person he was while he was at Harvard,” Sneddon says. “He’s passionate about college hockey, he cares about everybody surrounding the program…and the success he’s had in the national hockey league hasn’t changed one bit. And I think that speaks volumes of him.”

—Staff writer Timothy J. McGinn can be reached at mcginn@fas.harvard.edu.