Crimson Collapse

To think I came back for this.

I guess a hockey team just can't be trusted these days. You leave the Harvard men's hockey team with a three-game winning streak, in prime position for a late Beanpot/ECAC/NCAA (take your pick) title run, and a mere three weeks later you're holding a broom out over a vat of quicksand, hoping Harvard can grab hold and drag itself to safety before it's too late.

How could things go so wrong, so fast? (I'm pretty sure it's not because I left school for a city in which it's damn-near impossible to get up-to-date college hockey scores in the local paper...)

Here's a guess: lack of confidence. The ECAC schedule always conspires against the Crimson come exam-time, just as most of the league is starting to find its peak-season form, Harvard gets to hit the books and puts its game jerseys in mothballs for three weeks.

When it finally returns to action, the Crimson invariably plays three games in four days (two ECAC, one Beanpot) at a point where its endurance and sharpness levels are inevitably down. In the past, Harvard has had the talent and the wherewithal to fight through such obstacles...but wait. Let's not dwell on the past.

Let's look at what happened Saturday night. All of the little things that have bedeviled the Crimson for months seemed to coagulated in the first 20-minute period, after which Harvard trailed 2-0 with its fighting spirit pretty much spent:

--Defensive lapses. Hockey is not a game in which you can play solidly for 58 minutes while letting six 20-second lapses sneak into your overall game. You'll get burned on three or four of those, and the way Harvard's offense has been sputtering of late, those will be several mistakes too many.

Five minutes into the game, Peter McLaughlin and Jason Karmanos collided about 10 feet in front of Tripp Tracy's crease, almost presenting the puck onto the stick of Vermont fourth-line winger Justin Martin. Less than 30 seconds later, Martin was inches away from grabbing another Crimson turnover; Harvard got away with both errors, only because the Cats have but one good forward line to turn to. Given a Perrin or a St. Louis, either mistake was as good as goal-ed.

--Sloppy penalties. At 5:20 of the first, Doug Sproule was called for holding Vermont defenseman Pavel Navrat as the burly Czech was pressing goal-ward to Tracy's left. One should a) not get beaten by a one-goal-two-assists "marksman" on the year and b) not haul him down when there's one of your teammates between him and the goal.

--Unfortunate calls. Let's not call them "bad", because if nothing else, they are consistent. Steve Martins picked up eight penalty minutes in the first period, and at least four of them were for "receiving." The league's most gifted scorer should not pick up matching minors like he does assists, but Martins has been hog-tied all year by penalty boxes as much as opposing stick-work.

--Bad luck (or, hot goaltending). Karmanos had a fantastic power-play chance halfway through the period, but his along-the-ice stuff attempt happened to get wedged against the paddle end of Cats goalie Tim Thomas's stick, lying flat along the goal-line. Two or three jabs at the puck, and still it lay under Thomas's blade.

--Timid power-play work. Twice Harvard had five-on-three advantages for over a minute, and twice they disintegrated without so much as forcing a brilliant save out of Thomas. YOU HAVE TO SHOOT THE PUCK TO SCORE, how loudly can I say it?

I'd also blame Ronn Tomassoni (you never win blaming individuals--the team as a whole stunk Saturday night, and to pinpoint any guilt on the aforementioned skaters is fruitless and ill-intentioned--but after watching a game like that, how can a self-respecting hockey critic not lash out at someone?), belatedly, for only Saturday getting back to the lines which were working so well for him during the glory days of mid-January after dabbling with some changes during what has become a 2-5-0 February swoon.

"It's always easy to keep with the status quo," Tomassoni said Saturday night. "I thought we needed a more consistent offensive effort if we were going to make any noise later on-in hindsight, of course, I wouldn't have made any changes."

But here he is, his team mired in what he admits is a slump, somehow still in third place in an ECAC race nobody wants to win. The rest of the conference is sneaking up on the Crimson, granted, and Harvard could very conceivably wind up as low as seventh or eighth in the league two weekends from now, but then again, it could also catch Clarkson for first over the same stretch of time.

"There's still time," Tomassoni said.

"They'll be fine-they'll work through [their slump]," Vermont coach Mike Gilligan predicted.

But nights like Saturday prove that you can't judge a season by its end cover. Harvard could very well get hot during the playoffs, win the post-season ECAC title in Lake Placid, go to the NCAAs, repeat its national semifinal showing of last year.

Somehow, though, after enduring the pain of utter humiliation at the hands of a middle-of-the-league Vermont team Saturday night, such a run seems like it could only be sparked by luck and luck alone. No way Harvard's that good this year--no way.