Trio Tabbed to Lead M. Hockey Next Year

When he became the Harvard men’s hockey coach in July 1999, Mark Mazzoleni didn’t have much time to prepare for the upcoming hockey season or to complete his first recruiting class in Cambridge.

In the end, that hardly seemed to matter. He brought in nine players; four eventually became NHL draft picks, one (Tim Pettit) led the ECAC in scoring this season and all have contributed to a program that has improved from an 11-17-2 record in Mazzoleni’s first season to consecutive NCAA tournament appearances over the past two. Harvard’s recruiting class of 2000 became its senior class of 2004 at last week’s team banquet.

“It’s hard to believe it’s already time for our class to lead the team,” said defenseman Kenny Smith, who was named next season’s captain at the banquet after a vote of the team’s 20 returning letterwinners. “When Coach was recruiting us, he was setting the base for this program to be in the upper echelon of college hockey.”

So perhaps in a nod to what the class has already accomplished, Mazzoleni moved away from the traditional one-captain leadership structure of Harvard hockey teams and named two assistant captains for next season, Rob Fried and Tyler Kolarik.

“Any number of the guys could’ve worn the letters, and I think Coach realized that, and the guys realized that,” said Kolarik, the team’s second-leading returning scorer with 28 points. “There was no [2001-2002 captain] Peter Capouch this year–the guy who you just knew was going to be captain. There are a lot of guys on this team that bring a lot to the table.”

All three players are familiar with leadership positions. Smith captained the U.S. National Team Developmental Program Under-17 team in 1998-1999, and did the same the next year with the Under-18s. Fried and Kolarik, meanwhile, co-captained the Deerfield Academy var-

sity as seniors.

“Wearing the ‘C’ is a tough thing to do,” Kolarik said. “It’s a burden as much as it’s an honor, so just having some ‘A’s, having guys with some letters, can take a lot of pressure off Kenny. It backs him up and allows him to be a little more flexible and focus on his own play, too.”

“We want to make his job easier,” Fried said. “There are so many guys on this team capable of being leaders, and [having assistant captains] is a reflection of that.”

Fried, whose gritty play in the corners earned him 13 points this season, said he is seeing “everything fall into place” the way he thought it would when Mazzoleni convinced him, and later Kolarik, to come from Deerfield to Harvard.

“I visited a lot of schools, and they all said that their goal was to win the ECAC,” Fried said. “But here it was Coach Mazzoleni and Coach [Nate] Leaman telling me that we were going to win the national championship. That was a big selling point for me.”

“Now I think that could really become a reality,” Fried added. “The potential is there. We’ve got a lot of expectations for next year.”

“I think we played and prepared like this year was going to be ‘The Year,’” said Smith, who has seven goals and 23 assists in 87 career games. “I tell you, it was a tough place to be in the locker room after we lost to Cornell in the ECAC championship game. We had prepared to hoist that trophy all year long, and having that disappointment will help us in our drive to get back there. For us seniors, [next] year has to be ‘The Year.’”

By sticking together for what promises to be three months of tough, on-ice and off-ice training, Smith, Fried and Kolarik are hoping to set the tone for a successful season in the summer.

“It helps when you’re working out right with the guys, and they’re pushing you and skating with you,” Smith said. “You get to know where they like to see the puck, and it makes things that much easier when practice starts.”

And when the first bucket of pucks is emptied onto the ice to begin practice next October, Smith will find himself leading a team that will be among the favorites to win the ECAC championship for the second time in three seasons after the Crimson had gone eight years without the Whitelaw Trophy.

“We’ve been getting better every year,” Smith continued. “Those 17 freshmen and sophomores we had on the team when we won the ECAC championship [in 2002] will be 17 juniors and seniors next season. Now our biggest step to take is to win the regional and get to the Frozen Four. That’s an extremely difficult step to take, but we have a tremendous group of players. It’s time for us to take it as far as we can possibly take it.

“We can’t wait any longer. This is it.”

—Staff writer Jon P. Morosi can be reached at morosi@fas.harvard.edu.