Harvard Hockey Missing Production from the Blue Line

“Welcome to DONATO!—the official trivia show of Harvard men’s hockey. Your first and only question is the following: Of the Crimson’s last 30 goals, how many were scored by underclassmen?”

A. 18

B. 23

C. 27

“C? Is that your final answer? Okay, you’re locked in. Vanna, show us the answer… Aaaand it’s C! Congratulations, Harvard fan! You win absolutely NOTHING!”

***

The Harvard men’s hockey team (5-10-3, 2-8-3 ECAC) may not have its own trivia show, but the Bright-Landry Hockey Center jumbotron featured a question similar to the one above during an early stoppage of play in Friday night’s Cornell game. The answer was indeed C—Harvard underclassmen had scored 27 or the Crimson’s last 30 goals heading into this past weekend, and Harvard bumped that stat up to 31 of the last 34 after a 3-2 loss to the Big Red on Friday and a 4-2 loss to Colgate on Saturday.

The trivia question was a not-so-subtle message for the eight or nine diehard Harvard fans who braved the horde of Cornellians that descended upon Allston on Friday. “Hey, keep your chin up. We just got picked apart by Yale on national television, and we haven’t won a home conference game since All Saints’ Day, but we do have some young studs who are gonna bring us back to the top in a couple years. You just wait.”

The Harvard icemen have passed the halfway point of their conference season, flirting with a repeat performance of their historic finish at the bottom of the ECAC last year. The team’s young offensive core is one of the few positives on which Crimson fans may pin their hopes of a future resurgence. This weekend, Harvard outplayed both Cornell and Colgate in the second and third periods, showing flashes of the team that it could be under the leadership of freshmen centers Sean Malone and Alex Kerfoot as well as sophomore wingers Jimmy Vesey and Kyle Criscuolo. Harvard currently ranks second among Division I squads this season in goals per game scored by underclassmen.

But a 90 percent underclassman goal rate is not necessarily a stat to celebrate. While the production numbers of the team’s young forwards suggest potential, the figure also points to an unbalanced and one-dimensional attack that may not necessarily improve with experience.

Nobody is surprised that the Crimson’s freshman and sophomore classes are carrying the brunt of Harvard’s offensive production. The squad entered the year with only five upperclassman forwards, and the two most talented of those five—NHL draft picks Colin Blackwell and Petr Placek—will not be lacing up anytime soon. The three upperclassman forwards who remain active have only served in supporting roles.

Harvard’s blue line, on the other hand, has not faced a similar dearth of upperclassman talent this year. Juniors Patrick McNally and Max Everson have served as the team’s starting defensive pair since returning eight games into the season, and captain Dan Ford has played in all 18 games. So far, Harvard defensemen have combined for a Division I-worst two goals and a Division-I-seventh-worst 27 points.

Two goals, 27 points. That wouldn’t be a bad mid-season stat line for graduated Harvard All-American defenseman Danny Biega ’13, who finished the 2011-2012 season with 10 goals and 35 points. Not so good for an entire team. Of course, the first job of defensemen is to, um, defend, but blue liners should be good for about 15 percent of their team’s goals over the course of a season. Crimson defenders have put in 4.5 percent of Harvard’s 44 goals this year.

Biega’s numbers declined precipitously last season as the senior closed out his collegiate career with two goals and 10 points. It was easy enough at the time to attribute his drop off to situational factors like the graduation of dynamic center Alex Killorn ’12 or the unexpected shortage of Crimson defensemen. But in the second straight year of abysmal production from the back line, Harvard coach Ted Donato ’91 has to be concerned.

In the second half of the season, Donato will have to find new ways to incorporate the Crimson blue line on the attack. Plant big guys like Brian Hart and Kevin Guiltinan in front of the net and have them scrap for every rebound off a McNally slapshot. Defensemen not named Patrick McNally should also not be afraid to let one fly from time to time. Harvard might not have the horses to turn things around this year, but the team cannot just wait for its forwards to grow up.

—Staff writer Michael D. Ledecky can be reached at michael.ledecky@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @MDLedecky.