So the first half is over and predictably I suppose, the team is no better off than last year, save for the wins over UConn and Yale. Otherwise, it's more of the same. Can't put the puck in the ocean and they spend way too much time in their D zone trying to defend. Were it not for our travel partner, we would be dead last. It would be interesting to learn how potential recruits and youth programs view Harvard as a hockey destination. The academics and facilities are first-rate; if things don't improve, coaching becomes the obvious target.
Yes, looks familiar, but not so surprising. It’s still early days and the program will be different when the Squirts are ready to commit.
The season-ending injury to Gwyn Lapp at Cornell was a huge loss for the scant offensive power Harvard has been able to muster to date. Last year’s leading scorer as a sophomore, she currently
remains tied for the lead this year, five games (and counting) into her absence. That tells you something about our lack of offensive punch.The box scores of the Friars games in particular would be different had she been on the ice. As for the North Country, Harvard should bag it for a few years and save money on bus fare. But the newbies are getting lots of ice time and carrying the play, when there is play to be carried. Where we have to look for excitement, as was the case last season, is in goal, though the rapid succession of talent, from Pellicci to Davidson to Tuffy, is a bit dizzying. This whole situation prompts me to ask a larger, off-season kind of question:
What’s the history —
is there a history — of ex-goalies as head coaches (either sex, any league)? Bellamy would have learned something about handling skaters from Crowell, but what about handling goalies? Who learns that? My impression is that goalies have to be given their head, so HCs keep the reins loose. I imagine that even goalie coaches are really in the business of occasional fine-tuning. But how does a head coach who is an ex-goalie herself do this ----- that is, chill and stay out of the way, especially with a potential wealth of talent to support? Probably can’t be done.
Of course I might be completely misreading these relationships, but the wider world of goalies, their coaches and their psyches, I’ve always found to be of interest. A different breed. Perhaps there's some Still Eeyore out there able to take the narrative back from the blue line into the crease.
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A media review of this past weekend (Given our bleak world, it’s nice that we still can rely on the PR boys to entertain us.)
At Clarkson: (L, 5-1) Down 3-0 in the first, “Harvard countered with a few chances late in the period.” (One of them, a one-timer no less, “was saved”!) So now you counter your opponent’s goals with chances, not goals of your own.
At SLU: (L, 4-2) Harvard “fell short in a narrow loss.” This is their way of saying that the team narrowly missed losing by three goals instead of just two. Down 4-0 midway through the third in a real nail-biter, Harvard scored once at 9:36 and then again
at 19:49.8. What that goal really meant was that SLU narrowly missed having a walk in the park.
Who says you can’t make this stuff up? They make it up all the time.