Welch Revitalizes Harvard Hockey

For just a moment, try to imagine Noah Welch playing for anyone but Harvard. Not easy to do after all that the Crimson has accomplished during his stay, now is it?

Two Whitelaw Trophies, four trips to the ECAC championship game, and four NCAA tournament berths—none of it possible without Welch.

Then again, why even bother considering what Harvard would be without Welch? After all, who wouldn’t want to latch on to a program on the verge of a return to national prominence?

Well, Welch for one. He didn’t, in fact. Not knowingly anyway. The Crimson to which he had committed prior to his senior season at St. Sebastian’s School hadn’t had a winning season in five years and had slowly but surely come undone in the decade following the departure of coach Billy Cleary ’56, who had guided Harvard to its lone NCAA title in 1989.

No, Welch didn’t opt for a free ride to the postseason, nor would he ultimately join a team that would succeed on the strength of the accomplishments of those who had come before him. His legacy would be bottled up with the resurrection of a program whose glory days seemed to have long since past.

“We definitely wanted guys that wanted that,” said former assistant coach Nate Leaman, who recruited Welch. “Noah knew what Harvard hockey was all about. We basically said to him, ‘Do you want to jump on someone else’s train, or do you want to build a train here?’”

Already a second-round NHL draft pick, Welch wasn’t short on offers. Sure, if he was going to build a train he’d build it in Cambridge, but if he had wanted a ride, it wouldn’t have taken much prodding to board the Green Line to Chestnut Hill.

As a boy growing up in Brighton, Mass., years before recruiting would demand his attention, Welch had already divided his loyalties between Harvard and Boston College. The former had always held the preferred position, though, thanks to equipment manager Chet Stone, who would place a call to the up-and-coming defenseman and a friend inviting the pair to skate when the Bright Hockey Center had open ice.

And when recruiters made their respective pitches and Welch narrowed his finalists to the four Beanpot participants, the Crimson again showed interest in ways the Golden Eagles never did.

“Harvard told me that I was one of their top recruits coming in and BC wasn’t really giving me that strong a look, I guess,” Welch said. “They liked me, but they weren’t as passionate and they didn’t seem to want me as badly.”

Of course, at that moment in time, the Crimson didn’t just want Welch. If second-year coach Mark Mazzoleni and his assistants were to turn their club around, they needed guys like him.

“We thought there was no way around it,” Leaman said. “At that stage, we were looking to build the program. We needed to improve the talent level of the program, the work ethic of the program, the jam of the program.”

The pitch was the same for Welch as for the class that preceded him, the one that had hooked his predecessor as captain, Kenny Smith ’04, and would soon net future assistant captains Ryan Lannon and Tom Cavanagh.

Determined to pursue skaters with character to complement their skill, Leaman and fellow assistant Ron Rolston hinged their pitch on the legacy they hoped their recruits would leave.

“We felt like those guys wanted to build the program,” Leaman said. “They wanted to leave their mark on something. We knew as a coaching staff which way it was going. We felt that we were getting the right pieces and the right guys on the bus. Guys like Noah, guys like Tyler Kolarik—they got things going.”

And while Welch didn’t know that would be the case when he committed, Harvard’s improvement when he was in his final year of high school offered more than a glimpse of hope, as the Crimson added five wins to its record while shaving two losses to finish above .500 for the first time since 1994.

Talk of being on the cusp of a Harvard renaissance was no longer mere idle speculation. Welch believed—as Leaman had told him—that the Crimson stood on the brink of a return to a new golden era.

“I knew the freshman class at the time I was coming in—Kenny Smith, Tyler Kolarik—I knew they had a great class. I knew Dom Moore was a great player. I knew we had a great team coming in,” Welch said. “I expected to win four ECAC championships and go to the tournament every year because we won our league...I knew our class was a good class and that we could make our mark on the program.”

Sure there were hiccups along the way. Neither of the roads taken to an ECAC title was smooth despite the lofty expectations heaped upon the Crimson’s shoulders. And each of Harvard’s three NCAA tournament appearances thus far have ended in heartbreak.

But as his days in uniform dwindle, Welch is fully aware that his dream has been more or less realized. With an at-large berth to the tournament, Harvard has now reached the big dance for four straight years—only the second team in Crimson history to do so.

The only other stretch that compares, five-straight from 1985-1989, was capped by a national title—a goal which Welch insists is not only within the realm of possibility this year, but is one for which this year’s squad is better equipped than any of those on which he has played.

“I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished and how we’ve put Harvard back on the map, Welch said. “I helped put Harvard back on the map. But there’s a huge part of me that’s not satisfied yet. I’m still hungry for what we can accomplish.”

—Staff writer Timothy J. McGinn can be reached at mcginn@fas.harvard.edu.