Harvard Hockey 2025-'26: Crimson Ascending

[CornellFan13]

You better hope Q doesn’t leave for Hockey East Andy Bedard. What’s your team’s record in NCAA Regional Finals? LOL. We don’t poach players nerd. Big 10 schools poach players because they can offer them NIL money. That’s poaching!

Didn't your own team's posters tell you to stop posting in the Quinnipiac thread because you were such an embarrassment to Quinnipiac fans?

 

[Skate79]

I don't know what I said that compelled you to reply with such vitriol. Unfortunately, literally everything you just wrote is wrong.


Maybe someone should buy you a dictionary for your birthday so you can understand your own words. You did not write that Quinnipiac plays more games than Harvard. Instead, you wrote: "They play a longer schedule than anyone else." Which I informed you is not true, because they play the same number of games as about 57 other teams in NCAA Division I hockey including six teams in their own conference, a conference you want to kick them out of because..."they play more games than anyone else"????


So according to you, the Big 10 and the Atlantic Hockey, and all the teams that comprise them, have the same national standing? That's obviously a completely absurd thing to say. The best players don't want to play in Atlantic Hockey in large part because the competition is so much worse. Atlantic Hockey gets exactly one team into the NCAAs every year. You'd rather the ECAC's reputation go in the dumpster?


You clearly don't follow recruiting at all, because if you did you'd know Harvard recruits better talent than the rest of the ECAC and usually it isn't even close. Harvard recruits more players on the NHL Central Scouting rankings, it recruits more players who get drafted, it recruits way more players from the USNTDP. This has been true basically every single year for 10-15 years now. Go read about it or ask a coach or advisor instead of making shit up.


First of all, I attended Harvard for graduate school. Second of all, people "shove that in your face" because it's considered an objective truth by anyone who follows these things.


Where'd you learn that logic? If you recruit better than the rest of the ECAC, you go to the Frozen Four every year?


"Fact is," Harvard has lost recruits to scholarship schools for ages, including when it last won the national championship and when it last went to the Frozen Four. "Fact is," Harvard has the most generous financial aid in the entire country along with countless other advantages that enables it to win many recruiting battles against those same scholarship schools as well as against the rest of the ECAC. "Fact is," since the no-penalty transfer rule went into effect, Harvard hockey has NEVER lost a player to the transfer portal that it wanted to keep.


The academic index to which you refer is a function of (a) 2/3 test scores and (b) 1/3 GPA. Google tells me the average Harvard admitted student's SAT is a 1540. Meanwhile, the average Cornell admit's SAT is...also a1540. For GPA, the average Harvard admit's is a 4.2, whereas the average Cornell admit's is a 4.125. So please explain to me how the exact same SAT and a functionally identical GPA makes it so much easier for Cornell to compete for national championships than Harvard.

I'm sorry your team sucks, but there's really no need to debase yourself.

There is so much that is factually incorrect with your post. For instance, the only recruit we 'lost' from the national championship team was Dave Pegula who switched his commitment from Harvard to BC because his dad went to BC. FACT. Also, John Weisbrod who played on a line with Pete Civaglia and Ed Krayer got a full scholarship to Denver but chose Harvard instead. We should have 'lost' him to Denver. I asked him why at the championship banquet and he said that when he got the call from Harvard that he was accepted, he decided to commit to us despite the cost. FACT. Financial aid while generous can't compete with athletic scholarships because Harvard doesn't make that decision until after the student is admitted. Other D-1 programs can promise the recruit a scholarship in the fall of their senior year. Or before. How do I know this? I worked for admissions for 10 years as a recruiter and advisor and know first hand how the academic index can be a roadblock. Wendell Carter had a mint transcript and Tommy Amaker tried everything to get him to come to Cambridge. But when you're going up against Coach K, forget it. No shot.

I can't help it if you guys can't or won't get your own thread - trolling ours only makes you look foolish. But hey, throw some more fish on the ice and scream obscenities until the cows come home if it makes you happy.

 

[Skate79]

My claim was that Harvard recruits better talent than the rest of the league, and this has definitely been the case the past 10-15 years. Remember, second overall pick Matty Beniers was committed and would have attended Harvard if not for COVID wiping out the Ivies' seasons. There is no chance any other ECAC school would ever be competitive for a player of that caliber. Matt Coronato is another example. A first round pick has not attended any other ECAC school for many years. I believe the most recent example was Riley Nash at Cornell in 2008-10, and that was only because his brother had already committed.

I believe that every season for the past 15 years, Harvard has had the most draft picks, the most high-round draft picks, the most recruits ranked by NHL Central Scouting, and the most recruits from the US National Team. In fact, in many of these years the gap between Harvard and the next-best ECAC school hasn't even been close. A year or two ago, Harvard had 15 draft picks on its team, which was the most in all of college hockey--more than Minnesota, Michigan, BU, BC.

Harvard also has far more players in the NHL than the other ECAC schools. It's been that way for many years, and it isn't close. Harvard has NHL stars like Fox, top line players like Beniers, Coronato, Lafferiere, Donato. It has many more everyday NHL players that I didn't name. The next closest ECAC programs have like 3 or 4 largely marginal players.

As to why many of their recent draft picks haven't panned out, I don't know. But the gap in talent is obvious. And if it hadn't been for COVID, Harvard may have fielded the single most talented team in the history of the ECAC in 2021. Remember, because of COVID they lost a ton of talent to the NHL (eg. Drury) or to other schools (eg. Beniers). They still ended up with a stacked team full of future NHLers in 2022, even despite these departures.

As to the part about Quinnipiac, I wouldn't say they "are doing things the absolute right way." Quinnipiac bends the rules. They're active at poaching players from other schools. They won the national title in 2023 because they convinced 7 players to stay a fifth year. They do these things even when they have recruits in the pipeline expecting to play. By instead bringing in transfers or keeping a senior an extra year, Quinnipiac forces their lesser recruits to either decommit or matriculate and then transfer out after getting no playing time. Also, the other coaches in the ECAC think Rand is a huge jerk.

Is Quinnipiac breaking any rules? No. But they push every rule to its extreme. Are they the only team doing this? No. But the rest of the ECAC does not operate in this fashion.

Still, it would be bad for the league if Quinnipiac left.

Uh Beniers went to Michigan. He decommitted because the Ivies didn't play during the pandemic.

 

[Skate79]

In the current climate, I could only ever see this happening if Penn were to elevate hockey to D1. They already have the building (though it would need a few renovations to get to D1 standards and they'd have to kick out a lot of the club and youth hockey programming currently there) but no big donor has come from the Penn alumni base, strangely enough. Another issue is that the school would need to add another women's sport along with hockey because of Title IX, and so effectively Penn would be adding three new sports. I also have the impression that Penn's athletic department doesn't care too much about the possibility of D1 hockey, which is a shame given the school's location and the fact that Penn would have a natural conference to join, Ivy or not.

Penn gave up hockey after the '77-'78 season. I'm not sure why they would re-start the program after all these years.

 

[Skate79]

So maybe we can get back to writing about actual hockey games as Harvard won their play-in against SLU tonight. Difference in the game was special teams; Harvard scored on the power play and a beauty of a shorthanded tally when Heikki Ruohonen stole the puck at the SLU blue line, raced in, stopped on a dime, did a 360 and snapped a forehand past Cameron Smith. One of the goals of the year. Five on five, SLU was slightly better than the Crimson during regulation and MUCH BETTER during OT. At one point, we iced the puck three times in a row forcing Teddy to call a timeout to give the guys a chance to catch their breath. The winning goal by Mick Thompson was off a faceoff win by Casey Severo who had a miserable night at the faceoff dot.

I went over the SLU thread to congratulate them on a great effort because they should have won. They had the better chances including several break-ins and odd man rushes. Curious that SLU posters aren't sold on their coach returning for next season.

Of course our reward for winning is an all expense paid trip to Ithaca. Otherwise known as Dante's Inferno. Oh joy.

 

[Red Hockey]

Of course our reward for winning is an all expense paid trip to Ithaca. Otherwise known as Dante's Inferno. Oh joy.

Harvard will go to Princeton if Brown somehow manages to upset Union today, regardless of what happens in Hamilton

 

[CornellFan13]

Uh Beniers went to Michigan. He decommitted because the Ivies didn't play during the pandemic.

Didn't I just say this?

There is so much that is factually incorrect with your post. For instance, the only recruit we 'lost' from the national championship team was Dave Pegula who switched his commitment from Harvard to BC because his dad went to BC. FACT. Also, John Weisbrod who played on a line with Pete Civaglia and Ed Krayer got a full scholarship to Denver but chose Harvard instead. We should have 'lost' him to Denver. I asked him why at the championship banquet and he said that when he got the call from Harvard that he was accepted, he decided to commit to us despite the cost. FACT. Financial aid while generous can't compete with athletic scholarships because Harvard doesn't make that decision until after the student is admitted. Other D-1 programs can promise the recruit a scholarship in the fall of their senior year. Or before. How do I know this? I worked for admissions for 10 years as a recruiter and advisor and know first hand how the academic index can be a roadblock. Wendell Carter had a mint transcript and Tommy Amaker tried everything to get him to come to Cambridge. But when you're going up against Coach K, forget it. No shot.

I can't help it if you guys can't or won't get your own thread - trolling ours only makes you look foolish. But hey, throw some more fish on the ice and scream obscenities until the cows come home if it makes you happy.

All these stories seem to bolster my point though? My point being: the admissions disadvantages you claim are hamstringing Harvard's hockey team have always existed, including when Harvard won the national championship. Or, for that matter, when it made the Frozen Four in 2017 or when it was a top team in the country in the 2022 and 2023 seasons.

Citing an example from basketball has no bearing on this conversation because Harvard's hockey program, unlike its basketball program, has been competitive for a national title (top 10 national ranking) on a semi-regular basis over the past 10-15 years, whereas Harvard and Duke basketball are in totally different leagues. Harvard Hockey regularly wins recruiting battles against BC and Denver. You think those schools didn't want Adam Fox, Matty Beniers, Jack Drury, Matt Coronato, or the many other blue-chip recruits that have (or would have if not for COVID) matriculated at Harvard the past couple decades? Harvard has the best brand name of any college in the world and it has extremely generous financial aid. It has great facilities. It's in Boston. It's not surprising that Harvard recruits very well. You seem to be unwilling to acknowledge this because Harvard has lately fallen short of its talent.

You've multiple times written the same thing about the academic index disadvantaging Harvard more than Cornell even though there's zero basis for that. You know it's not true, but you keep repeating it.