Harvard 2022-23: What's Up?

[Trillium]

It's quite remarkable to me, that after more than a decade of over and over again hearing Skate79's inevitable ongoing attacks on players' lack of talent or motivation, or bemoaning the inability of Harvard to recruit enough depth to be able to field more than a couple of solid lines, that suddenly he's also finally come to the conclusion that I and others reached EONS AGO that maybe, just maybe, it was actually Stone rather than the players that has been the root of the problem all along. The facts were always there, if one wanted to see it, but the mythology won out.

It's literally made my year to see him and I finally seemingly on the same side. At the time I wrote this rebuttal to him over 6 yrs ago, (and which I know he took offence to) I never thought that day would ever come. Better late than never. Unfortunately, since that time, 19 more players have left the program prior to graduation and including that season, Harvard's record is 77-94-17. Both Yale and Princeton, historically both tougher to get into as Ivy athletes, are now under new coaches ranked significantly ahead of Harvard .

But the most important question is, WILL THE HARVARD ADMINISTRATION ever see the light too and come over from the dark side and see that Stone has been the problem all along? Is the fact that some, even many, of her formerly most ardent admirers are finally coming to accept that their perceptions of her were not as had been believed, and a sign that the end is near?

I admit that, knowing the trauma that so many of these athletes were already enduring from their coach, comments from assorted fans further denigrating them and making excuses for their abuser really added too much insult to injury. Sorry Skate, but somebody had to stick up for these athletes. I can't tell you how much it means that someone finally is in a meaningful and more credible way. Thank you to Bob Hohler, Katie Strang and Hailey Salvian, and especially to all the courageous athletes who are finally speaking the truth their predecessors felt they couldn't.

She may have been a good coach at one time in a different era, but that day is long gone.

Your excuse for Harvard's increasingly lacklustre performance in recent years, and abysmal performance this year -- ie. "lack of talent" relative to better performing teams--is certainly not supported by ANY objective facts.

Since the time the current year's senior class arrived on campus, Harvard's roster has been graced with 12 players who were selected for Canadian or US National U18 and/or U22 teams. That's more than half the roster!! While I would certainly not suggest that being selected to a National team necessarily makes someone MORE talented than many who are passed over, it would be ridiculous to suggest any of these players are not top end talent. Further, the majority of remaining Harvard players have very unusually strong hockey resumes which generally include attendance at NDC camps, league all star honours, titles with top teams, National Championship appearances, scoring titles, family NHL pedigrees, et al.

Compare that to other ECAC programs, none of which have nearly the same depth of national team experience, nor breadth of other hockey achievements all the way down the roster:

Nationally #3 ranked Clarkson has only half as many (6) players with National USA or Canada U18 experience (plus 1 player on the Czech National team). In addition, historically, Clarkson teams have often been widely seen as relatively slow by D1 standards, though they have typically seemed to have been able to overcome this in the win column regardless. Most of their players in many seasons would have been deemed far too slow to be of any interest to Harvard. (In fact, a great many relatively slowish players for a variety of teams over the years have notched much higher stats than anyone on Harvard's current roster, but I digress....)

Nationally #5 ranked SLU has only 2 players with National team experience. Furthermore, SLU has only 3 seniors and 8 freshman, meaning they are overall a very inexperienced team in terms of D1 level play. Perhaps even more notably, a large number of players on the roster have no real "blue chip" hockey achievements noted in their bios, unlike virtually every player on Harvard's roster. This relative lack of "blue chip" talent is not a new phenomenon for SLU. Their "lack of talent" and very young roster have been no barrier to top end performance, either this year or in years past, where their performance has also been consistently good. I think of SLU as typically having great "lunch bucket" teams, not flashy or particularly speedy but with exceptional work ethic and great teamwork rather than exceptional individual skill.

Taking a look at top-rated Ivy competitor Princeton, now #9, which you seem to believe has been more successful at securing high end talent relative to Harvard. However, they have 4 players on their roster (only 1/3 as many as Harvard recruited in the same period!) who had National U18 team experience coming in. There are actually a great many players on Princeton's roster who had zero interest from Harvard.

In actual fact, Harvard has always been far more blessed talent-wise relative to the majority of it's ECAC competition (perhaps with the one exception of Cornell in a few of its greatest glory years). Harvard's top academic reputation automatically makes it a highly favoured destination. Its significantly more flexible admission policies relative to its Ivy competitors, especially vs Princeton and Yale, are also well-known factors that make it that much more appealing to recruits, and provide it with access to a significantly larger player pool to draw from. Historically strong performance on-ice, albeit now changing, has made it a further big draw. While there are certainly a few other reasons for Harvard to have growing difficulties in recruiting moving forward, that has not yet been a factor in poor team performance.

A look at the RPI rankings indicates that only Union and RIT currently rank lower than Harvard among D1 programs this season. Probably not coincidently, both are non-Ivy non-scholarship schools which, unlike Harvard, result in very difficult recruiting challenges for their coaches. There is no comparison whatsoever to the skill level of players rostered by these 2 schools relative to Harvard. Player for player, it is truly like night and day difference.

At some point, one has to stop laying the blame on the players' lack of hockey skills for Harvard's woes and begin to look elsewhere for the real answers. As the above data and their bios show, Harvard's rostered players were incredibly talented and high-achieving on ice the day they stepped on campus, both in absolute and relative terms. In the vast majority of cases, they were heavily pursued by several other D1 hockey programs. It's not possible that suddenly those skills, displayed in other hockey environments, just disappeared. If it's not talent, what else could it be? For many seasons, a significant number of players actually seem to have gone backwards in offensive numbers during their Harvard careers (other than those who saw little ice time early on of course). What could possibly account for that?

Conversely, in numerous cases, many relatively unheralded incoming players have made a big impact on other teams. Just a lot of late bloomers? Diamonds in the rough spotted through unusually clever recruiting off the beaten path? These strong performances may also be a mark of good development, high motivation and growing confidence, strong team chemistry, adjusting coaching strategy to team and individual strengths, etc.--all important attributes related to effective coaching which creates a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

A great many experienced observers for many years, have judged Desrosiers and Wells the best coaches in the ECAC, and I would agree. I don't think it's any accident then that their teams are ranked where they are in the country, despite the fact they are not necessarily blessed with the most talent, nor the most highly desirable educational venue either to be attracting "the best of the best".

Are you just looking for an easy scapegoat or do you really want to find the truth? To discover the reasons for Harvard's growing malaise I might suggest you would need to dig much deeper. Make sure you leave no Stone unturned.

[dave1381]

The very first time I met Katey Stone was after a loss (officially a 4-4 tie) against Brown in December 1999, the Fall after the national championship. It was Tara Mounsey's last college game at Bright, and Harvard blew a 4-1 lead. Guess how fun the atmosphere outside the locker room felt! Coach Stone is... not a complicated person. It's always been clear who she is, from the moment I met her. It's not like she is secretly intense with her players and presents a different persona to the outside world. What was less obvious to me is the overall impact of her coaching, for better or worse, over the years.

I fully agree that she has been less succesful since 2015, and that Harvard and its hired law firm should carefully examine the mental toll her coaching has had on players over the years, and that this mental toll may relate to her lack of recent success in both recent recruiting and in succeeding with the players who do come under her fold.

But some seem to want to go further and want to tear down everything about Harvard hockey. I addressed the nonsense about racism and hazing in my last post, and in earier posts. Some also want to cherry-pick and say anyone would've done the same or better with the talent she happened to recruit during the glory days of Harvard hockey. Well, plenty of other eastern coaches had talent too and were not as successful, and only Clarkson's recent-ish dynasty with 3 NCAA titles is clearly more accomplished among the ECAC/Hockey East schools. Neither Dartmouth nor UNH even made an NCAA final in their peak years of the NCAA era. Harvard has made exactly as many NCAA title games as BU, BC, and Northeastern combined. And Harvard was far more competitive in those 2003-05 games than BU or BC were in any of theirs. At the time I was closest to the Harvard team, they won every ECAC title 2004-2006 and were definitely preseason underdogs to Dartmouth in '04 and '05 and no one picked them to win in '06. The 06-07 team was more disappointing but the Wisconsin NCAA quarterfinal was historic. So there were some succcesses then, no doubt.

That said, debates about Stone's past success and racism/hazing are all sideshows: fun to engage in on this forum, some will have personal stakes in that debate, but overall it is all besides the point. What should matter here is the historic mental health of her players, and how Harvard can improve mental health support and facilitating channels of feedback when players are not receiving appropriate support, and not just with the Harvard women's hockey team, but the entire athletic program. The media should not be the primary channel for which Harvard players feel they can talk about their mental health issues and address problems. But I felt that was the case 20 years ago and it seems clear that situation has not improved.

[Timothy A]

This thread is certainly setting records for the longest posts of all time. They are too long to read on a potty break. Do all the posters have ivy degrees or is this just an eastern thing?

[reggiedunlap9]

Harvard Womans Ice Hockey on the front page of the Boston Globe again. Have to give the Globe credit they are doing all it can to bring down Coach Stone.

[FiveHoleFrenzy]

This thread is certainly setting records for the longest posts of all time. They are too long to read on a potty break. Do all the posters have ivy degrees or is this just an eastern thing?

No kidding...

Props to one of the posters in the comment section of the "This is a sham" article who came up with..."The face of Harvard is Crimson."

[Prowler]

Coach Stone is... not a complicated person. It's always been clear who she is, from the moment I met her. It's not like she is secretly intense with her players and presents a different persona to the outside world.

Just when I thought you were starting to see the light. You cant be serious? That is EXACTLY who she is. Puts on the pleasant face for the media and says all the right things when under the spotlight or on camera, but then goes in to the locker room and unleashes on the players under her charge. If your one of the favored, you might not be the target of a lot of it, but you absolutely witnessed it, and for those unfortunate enough to draw her ire, you got blasted for the most ridiculous infractions, at best. At worst, it would cost you ice time and a public lashing, or a private demeaning and degrading beatdown. Yes, I have met her, several times... I know this to be fact...

[Skate79]

Bob Hohler's follow-up in the Boston Globe this morning: ‘This is a sham:’ Harvard faulted for response to abuse claims in women’s hockey program run by Katey Stone - The Boston Globe

To Trillium. Thanks for your thoughtful post. First, I want to say that I'm truly sorry your daughter had to endure what she did when she was at Harvard. NO student athlete should have to absorb that type of abuse. While I am not a parent, I have many nieces and nephews who have played or are currently playing sports including hockey. Several have been bullied and abused to the point where two of them quit the sports they loved and had several years of mental health counseling. I have seen firsthand what this type of abuse can do to young people and there is no room for it in our society at any level.

That said, while you are happy that I've come over from the 'dark side', I had no indication of what has been going on for years inside the program. I only tangentially understood from parents and former players what might have been a problem or problems inside the program. So, my comments that you referenced were based strictly on what I saw on the ice, not what happened off ice. For that, I can't be blamed for my stance. I called it like I saw it as to what was happening in-game. I obviously would have had a much different slant had I knew what you and others who are much closer and well informed knew about Coach Stone and the program.

I recently contacted a friend of mine who had a cup of coffee with the Washington Caps in the late 90's about his daughter who is a very good hockey player and applying to colleges. He thanked me for alerting him to what was happening and assured me that his daughter is only applying to Princeton and Yale in the Ivies. Minnesota and Wisconsin are hot on her trail and if they offer her a full ride, she might accept. But Princeton is her first choice.

[FiveHoleFrenzy]

I recently contacted a friend of mine who had a cup of coffee with the Washington Caps in the late 90's about his daughter who is a very good hockey player and applying to colleges. He thanked me for alerting him to what was happening and assured me that his daughter is only applying to Princeton and Yale in the Ivies. Minnesota and Wisconsin are hot on her trail and if they offer her a full ride, she might accept. But Princeton is her first choice.

Wait, what? I thought we were told by a certain someone that Minnesota only selects recruits. Minnesota actually pursuing a recruit? Color me surprised.

[Trillium]

But some seem to want to go further and want to tear down everything about Harvard hockey.

What some feel needs to be torn down is a culture where wins and the ancient history of a program are the only thing that matter, despite the until-now-hidden truth that players across decades were merely tools whose physical and mental health were sacrificed to aggrandize their abusers ego, as well as to expose a compliant and complicit administration who continue to perpetuate that problematic culture despite years of mediocrity.

It's not at all about wanting to destroy a program, it's about taking to sorely needed steps to repair the program's former reputation by finally addressing the problems and moving on from what's been dragging it down.

Some also want to cherry-pick and say anyone would've done the same or better with the talent she happened to recruit during the glory days of Harvard hockey.

How do you know they wouldn't? Maybe, maybe not. This is an unanswerable question. The glory days of Harvard Hockey featured dominant players Botterill, Ruggiero, Corriero, Chu, Cahow and Vaillancourt. This also corresponded with an era when the total talent pool was much smaller, and the gap between the top and bottom of that pool was immense. That is no longer the case, and correspondingly the dynamic between the superstars and other solid players around them has also evolved considerably. One would hope that any coach with a roster like that would be very successful. Still, she has never won an NCAA Championship. And she has not recruited another player of Vaillancourt's stature since 2004, ie. since before the current Harvard freshmen were born. Her coaching tactics have failed to evolve.

..only Clarkson's recent-ish dynasty with 3 NCAA titles is clearly more accomplished among the ECAC/Hockey East schools. Neither Dartmouth nor UNH even made an NCAA final in their peak years of the NCAA era. Harvard has made exactly as many NCAA title games as BU, BC, and Northeastern combined. And Harvard was far more competitive in those 2003-05 games than BU or BC were in any of theirs. At the time I was closest to the Harvard team, they won every ECAC title 2004-2006 and were definitely preseason underdogs to Dartmouth in '04 and '05 and no one picked them to win in '06. The 06-07 team was more disappointing...

I totally get the nostalgia of the glory years for those who were part of it, but it's now ancient history. Why is a continued focus on that era still seemingly any justification for protecting Stone ~20 years later: ignoring the fact that the program has sunk to historic levels of mediocrity, and that her coaching tactics have been exposed as divisive, abusive and increasingly ineffective? Hockey has changed in so many ways in the past 20 years. Dartmouth, UNH, BC, BU, Northeastern, Clarkson, Yale, et al. all moved on with different coaches since her glory days. Why does Harvard remain obstinately stuck in the past?

[ARM]

I addressed the nonsense about racism and hazing in my last post, and in earlier posts...

I wouldn't be quick to dismiss allegations of racism. The company where I work has a zero-tolerance policy for certain violations, and employees can be dismissed for a racist act/statement; a pattern of racist behavior is not needed.

[Timothy A]

Wait, what? I thought we were told by a certain someone that Minnesota only selects recruits. Minnesota actually pursuing a recruit? Color me surprised.

Wait, Watts? Tosu is not pursuing this player? I thought we were told by a certain someone that their days of only getting WI and MN rejects was behind them.

[Trillium]

Bob Hohler's follow-up in the Boston Globe this morning: ‘This is a sham:’ Harvard faulted for response to abuse claims in women’s hockey program run by Katey Stone - The Boston Globe

That said, while you are happy that I've come over from the 'dark side', I had no indication of what has been going on for years inside the program. I only tangentially understood from parents and former players what might have been a problem or problems inside the program. So, my comments that you referenced were based strictly on what I saw on the ice, not what happened off ice. For that, I can't be blamed for my stance. I called it like I saw it as to what was happening in-game. I obviously would have had a much different slant had I knew what you and others who are much closer and well informed knew about Coach Stone and the program.

Thank you for your comments. Yes, I do realize you had no way of knowing the truth, and were likely flummoxed why it felt like I was jumping down your throat. You were just drinking the kool-aid that Stone was selling: She played 2 lines only because she didn't have the depth of talent she required to play the 3 or 4 she really wanted to (I'd heard that from her lips myself when I challenged her about her coaching in the recruiting process...only it never changed in a deep talent pool); she couldn't field good enough teams because she couldn't get them through admissions (yet she got players in with ACT scores other Ivies and even the odd D1 school couldn't) ; players didn't get ice time only because they weren't good enough (yet players who were stars in club hockey sat while other with parental connections she found useful played ahead of many of them year after year) . She's terrific at aggrandizing herself and always making any failures the fault of her players instead.

I recently contacted a friend of mine who had a cup of coffee with the Washington Caps in the late 90's about his daughter who is a very good hockey player and applying to colleges. He thanked me for alerting him to what was happening and assured me that his daughter is only applying to Princeton and Yale in the Ivies. Minnesota and Wisconsin are hot on her trail and if they offer her a full ride, she might accept. But Princeton is her first choice.

What you are hearing from your friend is very consistent with what has been happening with increasing consistency in the last decade /decade and a half. While the truth about her is only now becoming more broadly known amongst the public, it has been talked about in key hockey circles for at least the last 15 years, and even moreso since she took a sabbatical to coach the Olympic team in 2013-14. I personally know of several eventual Olympic players, and even more blue chip prospects, who would gladly have considered a Harvard education, but ultimately chose other Ivys because of Stone. I cannot personally substantiate this, but I also heard from multiple sources that I consider reliable, that many players complained about her the year she coached the Olympic team, leading to her being later dropped from subsequent USA Hockey gigs. So, in light of all that, the drops in team performance after her return to Harvard, and seeming acceleration in her toxic behaviors in frustration since, is also a reflection of her being a negative in recruitment. Still, the draw of a Harvard education remains powerful. Of course, now that this negative information about Stone is for public consumption in the media, recruitment (and therefore ultimately team performance) will be increasingly negatively affected until she is replaced. This will of course now be further compounded in the near term by the sudden leave of absence of her Associate Coach, who does all of the recruitment (outside Stone's own network of powerful sycophants).

[dave1381]

Just when I thought you were starting to see the light. You cant be serious? That is EXACTLY who she is. Puts on the pleasant face for the media and says all the right things when under the spotlight or on camera, but then goes in to the locker room and unleashes on the players under her charge. If your one of the favored, you might not be the target of a lot of it, but you absolutely witnessed it, and for those unfortunate enough to draw her ire, you got blasted for the most ridiculous infractions, at best. At worst, it would cost you ice time and a public lashing, or a private demeaning and degrading beatdown. Yes, I have met her, several times... I know this to be fact...

Ok, I rightly need to clarify -- what I was trying to say was that anyone who's spent a decent amount of time around Katey Stone would pick up on her coaching style, so it should be no surprise to anyone in the administration of Harvard Athletics. Yes, major media who only covered her for big events might not have a clue. I sure sensed it the moment I met her, though having met her after having blown a 3-goal lead to a key rival in a regular season game was more revealing than usual.

Why is a continued focus on that era still seemingly any justification for protecting Stone ~20 years later

I agree it shouldn't be. I'll leave it at that.

I wouldn't be quick to dismiss allegations of racism. The company where I work has a zero-tolerance policy for certain violations, and employees can be dismissed for a racist act/statement; a pattern of racist behavior is not needed.

Normally I'd agree. But notice that the one related issue Harvard has been willing to comment on publicly at great length (and this was after the Globe article!) was defending Katey Stone extensively on the chiefs-indians comments. Harvard even on first reference referred to the comment as "Coach Stone’s self-reported use of a once frequently-used colloquialism that is now deemed culturally insensitive during a team meeting" which is about as dismissive as one can get in describing such an event.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2...k-initiatives/
So I would be absolutely shocked if Harvard's view on this changes, and I don't expect it to be much of a focus of the new investigation.

[Trillium]

Normally I'd agree. But notice that the one related issue Harvard has been willing to comment on publicly at great length (and this was after the Globe article!) was defending Katey Stone extensively on the chiefs-indians comments. Harvard even on first reference referred to the comment as "Coach Stone’s self-reported use of a once frequently-used colloquialism that is now deemed culturally insensitive during a team meeting" which is about as dismissive as one can get in describing such an event.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2...k-initiatives/
So I would be absolutely shocked if Harvard's view on this changes, and I don't expect it to be much of a focus of the new investigation.

Yeah, there seems to be rather unanimous consensus that Harvard's Administration is as big a part of the culture problem that needs to be addressed as Stone is. They sure can't read a room. The hubris of both is horrifying. Not a good look.

[Skate79]

Wait, what? I thought we were told by a certain someone that Minnesota only selects recruits. Minnesota actually pursuing a recruit? Color me surprised.

I can only tell you what I was told by my friend. I have no insight into Minnesota or Wisconsin's recruiting playbook.