Saints Come Stumbling In

In the final scene of Goldeneye, invincible hero James Bond is pushed to the edge by Alec Trevelyan before emerging victorious once again.

On the ice of the Bright Hockey Center this weekend, the Harvard men’s hockey team will have to outlast another motivated Trevelyan as the Crimson hopes to emerge victorious over T.J. and the rest of St. Lawrence for the sixth and seventh straight times. The last time these two squads faced off, Trevelyan registered an assist and scored a go-ahead goal before senior Dan Murphy led Harvard’s comeback charge to down the Saints (20-15-2).

The winner of this weekend’s best-of-three quarterfinal series will travel to Albany, N.Y., next weekend to compete in the semifinals of the ECAC tournament.

“It’s win, or lose and go home,” junior winger Ryan Maki said.

“We worked hard to get home ice,” said Harvard coach Ted Donato ’91 of his team’s first-round bye and subsequent quarterfinal at the Bright, earned via a fourth-place finish in the ECAC regular season standings. “We’ve got to take advantage of it.”

The Crimson (17-10-2) clinched the fourth spot two weeks ago, helped in part by a victory over St. Lawrence on the final weekend of the regular season.

Meanwhile, the Saints had to host Brown last week and only edged the Bears with two hard-fought overtime victories and a one-goal loss sandwiched in between.

The difference in rest may be this difference this weekend. Harvard has had time to heal and regain its full strength—a valuable advantage given that a number of injuries plagued the Crimson lineup in February. In addition, meddlesome winter illnesses have spread through the team this past week.

“It seems that we have some guys like Mike Taylor and [Tyler] Magura that look like they’re getting healthy,” Donato said of his two sophomore forwards. Taylor has missed the last seven games with a leg injury, and Magura went down three weekends ago at Cornell.

“We’ve had a lot of sickness going through the team,” the coach added, “so that’s something that hopefully we’ll have get out of our system by the weekend.”

“A couple guys were bruised a little bit,” Maki said. “But it helped out that we had two weeks and had a good practice last week and [are] ready to go this week and get a couple wins.”

At the same time, such a long break can have its negative effects. And since playoff time comes down to win-or-go-home contests, Donato has been preaching to his skaters that they must focus on the important prize.

“We have a very dangerous opponent, and I told our guys, ‘You know, I think having the bye week gives us a sense of security,’” Donato said. “We realize that we need to win this weekend.”

This attitude has trickled down through the Crimson lineup: Donato’s skaters echoed this same sentiment after Wednesday’s late practice. When discussing the mental advantage Harvard has over the St. Lawrence with its five-game winning streak—which dates back to last season—Maki was quick to note that “it’s the playoffs, and everyone in our locker room knows that anyone can beat anyone, and we can’t expect to win off of just showing up.”

During the regular season, however, the Saints could not beat the Crimson in either of a pair of tight games.

On Feb. 24, Harvard escaped with the important 3-2 victory after Murphy beat St. Lawrence goalie Justin Pesony twice to transform a one-goal deficit into a one-goal win.

At the end of November, the Saints played the more offensive game, throwing 46 shots at Harvard junior netminder Justin Tobe while the Crimson mustered just 16 on the St. Lawrence goal. But again, the Saints found themselves on the short-end of a 2-1 decision.

“I think the experience that we have gained from playing them so much really helps,” junior Kevin Du said. “I think we have the confidence going into this weekend that we know we can beat them—we know we can play with them.”

If Harvard can edge the Saints twice more, the Crimson will get the chance to die another day. It means next weekend will be spent in Albany at the ECAC tournament’s championship weekend festivities.

For now, the Crimson will have to keep Trevelyan and St. Lawrence from pulling off the un-Hollywood ending, and the battle begins at 7:00 pm tonight.

—Staff writer Gabriel M. Velez can be reached at gmvelez@fas.harvard.edu.