ON HOCKEY: Meehan Big Advantage for Brown; Princeton Fires Quesnelle

If you’ve followed hockey long enough, you know this always happens during the playoffs. Here comes your team, passing, skating, and playing fun-to-watch hockey. You’re generating chances and scoring goals. You’ve won a series or two.

But you must’ve done something to displease the hockey gods, because your next opponent is an absolute tactical nightmare. For them, Objective No. 1 is to make you mess up, and Objective No. 1(a) is to embarrass you in the process. They choke off play in the neutral zone so tightly that you feel like you’re playing in a bathtub.

Take notice, Harvard hockey fans. The Brown Bears are on the schedule. Quick, everybody grab your dry-erase markers and white boards. It’s time to talk neutral-zone trap.

What is the neutral-zone trap, anyway? Here’s the short version: a system whereby a team sends in one forechecker, in attempt to steer the play to one side or the other, then clogs the neutral zone with the other four.

That effectively shuts off the middle, leaving only the walls for you to work with. And once your team gets the puck near the red line—even if it’s on a helpless chip along the boards—they’re on you with a double-team, squeezing you like an orange until the puck pops out.

This is not pretty, but it is championship-winning hockey. Ask the New Jersey Devils.

“Probably the hardest system to play against, anywhere,” confirmed Nate Leaman, the former Harvard assistant who is now Union’s head coach. “Guys in the NHL are trapping, and teams just can’t get through the trap.”

The object of the trap is to take one of two things away from you: the puck or your speed.

“Usually, if you have one, you don’t have the other,” Leaman said. “If you make it through the neutral zone with the puck, you don’t usually have much speed. Or, you’re dumping the puck and chasing it.

“You end up getting through with a lot of 1-on-2’s. Or, you’re getting through and you’re going slow and not a threat. It’s a frustrating system to play against.”

Especially for Harvard. Vermont coach Kevin Sneddon ’92 said the key to success against the Crimson in any game is breaking up plays in the neutral zone and forcing it to dump the puck—two trademarks of the neutral zone trap, and two things Brown did well in its 6-0 win over the Catamounts in the regular-season finale.

“Our forwards never attacked the zone with speed or odd numbers [like a 3-on-2 or 2-on-1],” Sneddon said.

So, how do you attack it offensively? “Keep it as simple as possible,” Leaman said. “I’ve found that when I get into trouble with teams that trap, guys are trying to do too much. You have to just keep it simple, keep the puck moving forward.”

Brown uses the trap as the starting point for its quick transition game, its primary mode of generating offense. However, the Bears counterattack slowed late in the season, as they scored only four goals in a 0-4-1 stretch—including three shutouts—before the UVM win.

“It was simple enough: shoot and get traffic in front of the net for screens and rebounds,” Sneddon said of Brown’s effort that night. “They had an incredible amount of energy in the offensive zone. They were first to all the loose pucks.”

Harvard’s challenge also includes one Yann Danis, whose puckstopping primacy has become the stuff of lore.

“Yann is the most valuable player in college hockey and deserves the Hobey Baker Award,” Sneddon said. “If he sees it, he will save it.”

Well, then. Harvard’s season’s pretty much over, huh? Not exactly. The Crimson has only lost once in seven games. The Bears have only won once in six.

Yale associate head coach C.J. Marottolo believes Harvard is playing “great hockey” now, and that the Crimson’s deep defensive corps could play a key role.

“They’ve got to get the D involved in the rush, and get that second wave of attack going through the neutral zone.”

Leaman expects the playoff savvy gained from back-to-back NCAA tournament appearances will benefit the Crimson this weekend.

“When it comes to the playoffs, they’re a confident bunch,” Leaman said. “A little cocky, actually, which is really good. It means they’re confident.

“The year we won it [2002], I think we all really learned that this is the way it has to be in the playoffs. You have to turn it up a notch, be intense, finish every hit—all the little things you talk about during the preseason.”

(THE BROWN) COLLEGE BOARDS

Brown finished the regular season with a 8-3-2 record at Meehan Auditorium—not quite on a par with last year’s sparkling 10-2-5 home slate, but good enough to keep the Bears among the league’s best teams in their building.

In fact, Brown’s .698 home winning percentage over the last three years (26-9-8) is third in the league, behind Cornell (.809) and Dartmouth (.717).

“They know how to win at home,” Marottolo said. “They get a lead, and it’s real hard to beat them.”

Every team with a good home-ice advantage seems to have some quirk about its rink that makes it tough for road teams to win there. At Meehan, that X-factor is the boards.

“The boards are so live down there,” Leaman said. “It makes it a lot different. A guy chips the puck and all of a sudden it’s 100 feet behind you.”

Harvard captain Kenny Smith said the team has “definitely” noticed that.

“We’ll be defending against shots coming off the backboards, and maybe we can use that to our advantage, too,” he said. “They practice there a lot, and they play there a lot, so they know what the boards are like. If we see them running any type of plays where they’re shooting it intentionally off the backboards, we have to make sure we defend against it.”

Aside from any set plays, the boards certainly play into the Bears’ defensive, trapping style.

“There’s a lot of play in the neutral zone and along the wall, and they know those bounces a lot more than you do,” Leaman said. “If they read a bounce right, and you read a bounce wrong, they’re behind you. And with their good team speed, that obviously helps them out a lot. That can put you on your heels a little bit.”

TIGERS HUNTING...FOR A COACH

Princeton’s record against Harvard this season: 2-0-0.

Against everyone else this season: 3-24-2.

Princeton’s record after defeating Harvard on Dec. 16: 5-9-0.

Princeton’s record since: 0-15-2.

All those numbers added up to Princeton’s firing of head coach Len Quesnelle on Monday morning.

“I’m trying to figure out where to go from here,” Quesnelle said when reached Tuesday. “I don’t really have much to say.”

“It was a change they had to make,” said one source with a connection to the program. “He lost the players. It’s too bad.”

Quesnelle had been a Princeton hockey lifer. He began as an assistant in 1988, the same year he graduated from Old Nassau, and became head coach following the departure of Don “Toot” Cahoon.

But up against considerable institutional adversity—a low priority for men’s hockey with respect to basketball, football and lacrosse; lack of two full-time assistant coaches; and a stingy admissions department—he finished with a four-year record of 29-84-11.

According to the source, alumni pressure was a primary reason for Quesnelle’s dismissal. “Oddly enough, considering a lot of those alumni complaining were here with him or played for him,” the source said.

The official review process will not likely begin until early April, since athletic director Gary Walters serves on the NCAA men’s basketball committee.

Middlebury coach Bill Beaney—mentioned in connection with almost every ECAC head coaching vacancy over the last few years, including at Harvard in 1999—is expected to be a strong candidate. Beaney’s son, Trevor, played for the Tigers and graduated last year. His daughter, Kristin, is a 1994 graduate of the university who enjoyed an All-American track career.

“I really think this is the place for Beaney, but there’s nothing official to it right now,” the source said.

The Crimson could not reach Beaney for comment this week.

The source also named Colgate interim coach Stan Moore, who will likely earn his second ECAC Coach of the Year award at next week’s league banquet, and Massachusetts assistant Mark Dennehy, who worked under Cahoon at Princeton, as potential candidates if they were to show interest. Neither could be reached for comment.

Former Clarkson coach Mark Morris told The Crimson yesterday that he plans to apply. “I’ll continue to do what I have to do to reestablish my career,” he said. “It’s something I have a passion for. I’m anxious to get back to the job I love.”

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