Re: Harvard Crimson 2012-2013
So age isn't a factor. And in my opinion talent (or at least the ability to recruit talent) should not be a factor. Many draft picks on the roster, many players that have shown top level talent. And other ivies can do well. Are you telling me that Yale has more talent, or at least better recruiting classes than Harvard? Or Princeton under Gadowsky? Or frankly Cornell (although admissions are lower there, independent media sources consistently rank Harvard's classes better, and very high nationally). So not age, not talent. Then what? The only logical thing to look to next is coaching. I'm not in the room, and I don't know much about what goes on around the rink other than what I see or hear on this board or infer with my occasional chats with alum. But it does seem like the logical conclusion. Last year appears to be an aberration, brought on by an exceptional player, a strong(er) senior class apart from Killorn (with a couple pretty good players and a few solid ones), and strong overall (I'm guessing) senior leadership which maybe helped right the ship and get them going in the right direction despite Donato. Look at the 3 years before that. All poor seasons. No exceptional seniors (is this recruiting or development...my thought is poor development, think Doug Rodgers or Al Biega who should have been high impact seniors), few pretty good seniors. The last good season before that was 07 08, where they made the ECAC finals as well. They had no standout player, but they had a very strong senior class, with many pretty good players (Meintel, Pelle, Taylor, MacDonald etc) and several solid seniors that made up a class that seemed to provide very strong leadership to keep everyone on task and the team heading in the right direction. The lack of such classes in the interim seasons points to poor development to me, with these 2 senior classes (08,12) being exceptions in terms of leadership (and possibly development, though it is hard to tell, since we don't really know how much they could have developed). It is possible to see a strong Harvard hockey, which competes every year in the ECAC with a chance at going to the NCAAs every year. And with a proper confluence of factors, there is no reason they can't be a top ten team nationally, as Yale seems to somehow manage almost every year for the past 5 or so, last year notwithstanding.
So age isn't a factor. And in my opinion talent (or at least the ability to recruit talent) should not be a factor. Many draft picks on the roster, many players that have shown top level talent. And other ivies can do well. Are you telling me that Yale has more talent, or at least better recruiting classes than Harvard? Or Princeton under Gadowsky? Or frankly Cornell (although admissions are lower there, independent media sources consistently rank Harvard's classes better, and very high nationally). So not age, not talent. Then what? The only logical thing to look to next is coaching. I'm not in the room, and I don't know much about what goes on around the rink other than what I see or hear on this board or infer with my occasional chats with alum. But it does seem like the logical conclusion. Last year appears to be an aberration, brought on by an exceptional player, a strong(er) senior class apart from Killorn (with a couple pretty good players and a few solid ones), and strong overall (I'm guessing) senior leadership which maybe helped right the ship and get them going in the right direction despite Donato. Look at the 3 years before that. All poor seasons. No exceptional seniors (is this recruiting or development...my thought is poor development, think Doug Rodgers or Al Biega who should have been high impact seniors), few pretty good seniors. The last good season before that was 07 08, where they made the ECAC finals as well. They had no standout player, but they had a very strong senior class, with many pretty good players (Meintel, Pelle, Taylor, MacDonald etc) and several solid seniors that made up a class that seemed to provide very strong leadership to keep everyone on task and the team heading in the right direction. The lack of such classes in the interim seasons points to poor development to me, with these 2 senior classes (08,12) being exceptions in terms of leadership (and possibly development, though it is hard to tell, since we don't really know how much they could have developed). It is possible to see a strong Harvard hockey, which competes every year in the ECAC with a chance at going to the NCAAs every year. And with a proper confluence of factors, there is no reason they can't be a top ten team nationally, as Yale seems to somehow manage almost every year for the past 5 or so, last year notwithstanding.