A Winning Combination

It was March 23, 2002, and Bruce Irving had driven to Worcester, Mass., site of the NCAA regionals, to watch Cornell take on Quinnipiac.

Co-owner, president, and CEO of Enpro Services, Inc., an environmental contracting company, Irving had been a Big Red goaltender until his 1985 graduation. Nearly two decades away from Ithaca had done little to diminish his loyalty.

He had always coached high school and summer camps on the side, and he remained a member of the Big Red faithful. But the group with which he was traveling arrived early, so Irving had a chance to catch the noon game: Harvard vs. Maine.

In goal for the Crimson was a freshman named Dov Grumet-Morris.

“I watched that game,” Irving recalls, “and Dov was so incredibly athletic—but so inefficient with his body, so inefficient with his puck control, his rebound control, with playing the puck.

“He really jumped out at me as being a player who needed a coach. To me, it was that glaring—he was making saves, but he looked like an absolute acrobat.”

Maine won the game 2:02 into overtime, 4-3, but Irving didn’t forget what he had seen.

THE PROJECT

At that same time, as coincidence would have it, Joe Bertagna ’73—commissioner of Hockey East, former commissioner of the ECAC, and the first-ever coach of Harvard women’s hockey—suggested that Irving join the American Hockey Coaches Association.

Having worked at Bertagna’s summer camps for years, Irving followed the advice, and shortly thereafter he learned of an opening with the Crimson program.

Harvard needed a volunteer assistant coach, and by the start of the 2002-2003 campaign, Irving was on board.

For three seasons now, Irving has been volunteering with the Crimson goaltenders. He shrugs off the 40-mile drives between his hometown of Newburyport (one of two ENPRO sites) and Cambridge.

“The guys always laugh and think it’s a long way,” he says. “It is a long way, but [at least] it’s a straight shot.”

And one that gives him plenty of time to think about all that awaits him at the Bright Hockey Center.

In addition to other duties, Irving has tutored five Harvard goaltenders during his tenure: Ben Weiss ’03, Will Crothers ’04, Grumet-Morris, junior John Daigneau, and sophomore transfer Justin Tobe.

When the volunteer first started working with Grumet-Morris, two things were apparent: the young goaltender had tremendous potential, but he was making life between the pipes a lot harder than it had to be.

“He would make a very acrobatic save,” Irving says, “but that was the first one, and he had no chance at making the second one. His stance and his ability to recover [were] very suspect.”

One who heard these criticisms without ever watching the Crimson might have thought Grumet-Morris to be a complete flop in net. But in fact, that was never the case.

In his first three years, the goaltender accumulated a 2.49 goals against average (GAA) and a .914 save percentage, both second in the Harvard history books. Grumet-Morris backstopped three phenomenal playoff runs, propelling the Crimson to three straight NCAA tournament appearances.

But these successes came in spite of Grumet-Morris’ weaknesses. Captain Noah Welch describes some of his classmate’s rookie efforts as “crazy, on-his-back, flipping-over-and-stopping-the-puck-with-the-back-of-his-head saves.”

Grumet-Morris made the saves, all right—he just made them look hard.

A FAST STUDY

Irving is quick to point out that there are scores of coaches with the right advice, but there are not always skaters who will take the pains to listen.

“Dov did,” Irving says. “He identified [his flaws] in bullet format and tried to pick them off, one by one.”

For his part, Grumet-Morris maintains that his game has best been served by two things: Bruce Irving and time.

“Goaltenders are not finished products when they come in [to college],” Grumet-Morris says of the latter factor, explaining, “it’s very easy for a young freshman forward to play on a team’s third line against the other team’s third-best line, play a power play, get some extra points, and start to put up good numbers, and start to play with other good, talented players.

“Whereas a goaltender,” he continues, “is either in the net playing well, or in the net playing poorly—in which case he’s usually on the bench after that.”

Grumet-Morris has played 113 to date, plenty of time to tweak his game with Irving’s insights.

“[Irving] has done such a fantastic job,” Grumet-Morris says, “because he relates what it is he’s thinking and his ideas about goaltending, his philosophies on goaltending so well. What he has been able to concentrate on is making the goaltenders at our program more simple in their approaches to the game, and to make the easy saves look easy.

“That’s something I had problems with my freshman year,” he admits, “and it ended up creating more trouble than a shot really should.”

Grumet-Morris readily confesses the flaws in his game, and he won’t hesitate to talk about his struggles with rebound control and recovery.

In fact, he’ll tell you that even this season—even with his nation-leading .947 save-percentage and third-best 1.60 GAA—he’d still like to improve on his out-of-net play and his transitions.

Irving calls Grumet-Morris a rare player, one committed to patching up “the glaring holes in his game.”

“He’s a kid who truly recognized his shortcomings,” Irving says, “and worked and worked to correct them.”

“I’d love to sit here and say, ‘Yeah, [this year’s success] is because I’ve been coaching him,’” Irving laughs, “but I don’t think that’s the case.”

SEEING THE RESULTS

Grumet-Morris has enjoyed a stellar career, shortcomings and all—and thus, laments Irving, “I know a lot of people are going to recognize his improvement, [but] I don’t think everyone will understand how dramatic I think it’s been.”

Take the night of Dec. 11, for example.

Those on hand in the Bright Hockey Center stands saw Grumet-Morris post 39 saves as the Crimson downed Maine 4-1. They saw Harvard push its winning streak to five and snap the Black Bears’ unbeaten streak of six.

What they might not have seen, however, was what Crimson coach Ted Donato ’91 deemed “a game within a game.”

Grumet-Morris had posted 106 saves in three career games against Maine—and he had earned three losses for his efforts. Twice, those losses bounced Harvard from the NCAA tournament, including last year’s heartbreaking third-period collapse, in which the Black Bears pushed four unanwered goals past Grumet-Morris to win 5-4.

Before this year’s Maine game, Grumet-Morris admitted that “the motivation, I think, speaks for itself.”

As did his play. The netminder turned away two quick breakaway attempts in the third period to preserve a 3-0 lead, and he shut down seven consecutive power plays, yielding only to the eighth but earning the 4-1 win nonetheless.

It was a game three years in the making, one that heralded Grumet-Morris’ arrival this season and set the stage for what was to come.

The Evanston, Ill., native is now on pace to graduate with 10 Harvard records, including the career shutouts mark of 11. And that, of course, is the direct result of his six whitewashes this season, another Crimson record.

Last Thursday, the netminder was announced as one of 10 finalists for the Hobey Baker Memorial Award.

“I think it’s just outstanding,” says Irving, who has watched his charge’s positioning, decision-making, and control continually improve over the past three years.

“He deserves it, and he’s responsible for it. He’s the one that has actively identified his weaknesses.”

Everyone but Irving will point out, though, that the goaltender did have help. Welch, who has skated in front of Grumet-Morris since the two were freshmen, declares Irving’s tutelage priceless.

“They say, sometimes, goalies make the best coaches, because as players, they can see everything in front of them,” Welch says. “Bruce just has a great knowledge for the game and a great love for the sport.”

“Invaluable,” Donato says of the volunteer’s efforts, while Grumet-Morris himself calls Irving “one of the biggest assets that I have here at Harvard.”

As for the unassuming Irving himself—well, the former long-time high school coach demands the praise about as much as much as he demands a paycheck.

“I’ve never really been paid to coach guys anyway,” he says, “so the volunteer part doesn’t mean much to me.”

He will admit, though, that Grumet-Morris’ feats are “definitely gratifying.

“I’ve only been coaching college kids three years,” Irving explains, “and on the first day, I definitely questioned whether they would listen to me.

“But Dov did.”

—Staff writer Rebecca A. Seesel can be reached at seesel@fas.harvard.edu.