A Shot at Redemption

Dave MacDonald may have been onto something.

It was December 12, and the Harvard men’s hockey co-captain had just seen his team suffer its worst defeat of the season, a 7-2 pummeling at the hands of Boston College. After 60 minutes of being outhustled and outmuscled by a hungry Eagles team, MacDonald summed up the experience as follows:

“I think there were more than a few times tonight where that wasn’t really our team out there.”

Two months later, MacDonald’s words are finally starting to ring true. After suffering through a nine-game winless streak, the Crimson has now won three of its last four and is poised to capture its first Beanpot title since 1993. If this is indeed the true face of Harvard hockey, it couldn’t have shown up at a better time.

However, to claim the Beanpot championship, and to prove that its transformation is complete, the Crimson will first have to prove that it is capable of beating BC.

“I know we had a tough game against them before, but that’s how hockey goes,” sophomore Doug Rogers said. “Some games you win, some games you lose. I think we have to prepare [for BC] the same way we prepared for the game against Northeastern, just be upbeat in practice, sharp in practice.”

If there is one facet of its game that Harvard could stand to improve on as it prepares for the winner-take-all rematch with the Eagles, special teams might be it. While the Crimson was a respectable 2-for-8 on the power play in the teams’ first matchup, BC was able to net four man-advantage goals in nine opportunities, including three power-play scores from winger Nathan Gerbe.

“We come into the game trying not to let [Gerbe] beat us, and certainly he did,” said Crimson coach Ted Donato ’91 after the loss.

“We strayed from our game plan,” MacDonald added. “We’re usually pretty tight defensively, strong on the penalty kill...I’m not sure what the cause of that was.”

While Harvard will need to figure out the causes of its team-wide defensive breakdown in order to shut down Gerbe and the Eagles this time around, at least one Crimson player may also be seeking a measure of personal redemption.

BC sent Harvard goaltender Kyle Richter to the showers early when the teams first met, slipping six offerings past the sophomore, including one that Donato described as “not a dangerous shot.” It was the definitive lowlight of the season for Richter, who now sees a chance to erase it in front of Boston hockey’s biggest audience.

“Times like that you don’t enjoy,” Richter said of his team’s nine-game dry spell, which included the loss to the Eagles. “But that’s when you’ve got to [resort] to the basics, the fundamentals—what you do best, and what you did to get us to that start that we had in the beginning.”

For Richter, a return to early-season form would mean playing like the best goalie in the country. For Harvard, it would result in something even greater—the right to be recognized as Boston’s greatest team.

“It would be a huge momentum-builder,” MacDonald said. “At the start of every year, there are a few key accomplishments that we flag...I think that having the opportunity to play in the finals is great, but our goal wasn’t to play in the final game. Our goal was to win the championship.”

“To tell you the truth,” he added, “I think it’ll be a great opportunity to show that we’re a lot better than the team [BC] faced in December.”

—Robert T. Hamlin contributed to the reporting of this story. —Staff writer Daniel J. Rubin-Wills can be reached at drubin@fas.harvard.edu.