College Hockey Update:  Last weekend featured two top fifteen match-ups, and St. Cloud State held at #1 after sweeping their weekend at Western Michigan, knocking the Broncos down two spots to #12; and Cornell edged up to #10 after settling on a tie at Clarkson (Cornell had beaten St. Lawrence the night before), which moved the Golden Knights up two pegs to #11 (Clarkson had beaten Colgate the night before).  Elsewhere, Massachusetts held at #2 after they won at Merrimack Thursday night, and then hosted and beat Maine Saturday night; and Minnesota-Duluth held at #3 after hosting and sweeping Miami-of-Ohio.

Mankato State held at #4 after hosting and sweeping Bemidji State; Quinnipiac held at #5 after they won at Brown and Yale; and Denver held at #6 after they won at Colorado College Tuesday night, and then they won, then settled on a tie, at Nebraska-Omaha Friday and Saturday nights.  Ohio State held at #7 after hosting and splitting with Michigan State; Providence held at #8 after they won at Connecticut Tuesday night, and then hosted and tied Boston University Thursday night; and Northeastern held at #9 after they split their home-and-home series with Boston College, with each team winning at home.  Arizona State edged down to #13 after they were swept at Minnesota; Harvard moved up two notches to #14 after their win at R.P.I., and their loss at Union College; and Bowling Green State held at #15 after hosting and splitting with Alabama-Huntsville.

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Last weekend Harvard had huge help from its freshman defenseman Jack Rathbone, of West Roxbury, MA., who scored the game-wining goal in his team’s 4-1 win at R.P.I. Friday night, and tallied two assists in his team’s 4-3 loss at Union College Saturday night.  The 5’11” 190lb freshman is tied for seventh on his team in goals scored, with six, and is fifth in assists, with thirteen.

Friday night at Rensselaer, the host Engineers got on the board only three minutes into the first period on a power-play goal by Chase Ziecky, following a hooking penalty on Harvard’s Jack Donato, and RPI took the 1-0 lead into the first break.  The first was a very active period, with Harvard out-shooting RPI 15-12, however the game went scoreless for twenty-eight minutes after the Ziecky goal.  Casey Dornbach broke the silence eleven minutes into the second to tie it up for Harvard at one apiece.  Jack Rathbone came through only two minutes later to put Harvard up 2-1, scoring what would be the game-winner.  Harvard out-shot RPI 11-4 in the penalty-free second period; the game again went scoreless for an extended period after the Rathbone goal, this time for twenty-two minutes.  In a defensively dominated third period in which there were only eleven shots (Harvard 7, RPI 4), Jack Drury (son of former Harvard/US Olympian/NHLer Ted Drury, nephew of former BU/US Olympian/NHL great Chris Drury) broke the scoring drought fourteen minutes into the third, and R.J. Murphy scored two minutes later, to seal the deal for Harvard, and give them the 4-2 win.  Saturday night at Union College, Harvard scored early in the first, but two unanswered second period Union goals, and a third in the third, put Union up by two with seventeen minutes left in the game.  Lewis Zerter-Gossage scored for Harvard (assist by Jack Rathbone) with thirteen minutes left to tighten it up at 3-2, but Union scored with six minutes left to make it 4-2.  Wyllum Deveaux scored for Harvard (assist by Jack Rathbone) with only fifteen seconds remaining, to make the final 4-3, Union College.

Before coming to Harvard, Rathbone played four years at Dexter Southfield in Brookline, MA., where he scored forty-one goals and tallied fifty-seven assists.  He was drafted by the Vancouver Canucks in the fourth round, 95th overall in the 2017 NHL Entry Draft.  Rathbone is from the West Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, a neighborhood of about five square miles and about 30,000 residents.  It was originally part of the town of Roxbury, founded in 1630, the same year as Boston, and it was originally farmland.  It seceded from Roxbury in 1851 and was annexed by Boston in 1874.

Harvard University, established in 1636, sits in Cambridge, MA., across the Charles River from Boston.  It enrolls about 7,000 undergraduates, and about 15,000 graduate students.  It sits on 210 acres, and it sits on a $40 billion endowment.  Its sports teams are called the Crimson, wear crimson, white, and black, and are in the Ivy League, competing in forty-two sports.  Harvard hockey started in 1898, and plays its games at the Bright-Landry Hockey Center, which seats 2,800, and has an irregular 204′ x 87′ sheet.  Harvard hockey has made twenty-four NCAA Tournament appearances, made thirteen Frozen Four appearances (the last being in 2017), and won the NCAA Championship in 1989.  The team is coached by Ted Donato, who had a great sophomore year on that 1989 team, as he scored 14 goals and added 37 assists.  In Donato’s four years at Harvard, he scored 50 goals and added 94 assists.  He also played fourteen years in the NHL, the first eight with the Boston Bruins, for which he scored 25 goals and added 26 assists in the 1996-97 season.  His NHL totals are 796 games, 150 goals, and 197 assists.  Donato went straight from the NHL to the head coaching job at Harvard in 2004, and in his first two years, coached two 21-game winning teams into the NCAA tournament.  His current lifetime record as head coach at Harvard is 236-209-55.  He coached another 21-game winning team in 2014-15, and a 28-game winning team in 2016-17; he also coached teams into the NCAA Tournament in 2015, ’16, and ’17.  Harvard, ranked #14, is 17-9-3, and has a bye this weekend in the first round of the ECAC Tournament, having finished the regular season tied for third place.  Harvard plays next on Friday, March 15th, when they host an ECAC quarterfinal best-of-three series; their opponent will be determined this weekend.

College Hockey Update Fun Corner Video Of The Week

A morning in the life of a four year old.  This puts a very good perspective on where the word “playing” comes from in the expression “playing hockey.”  Something that can’t hurt to remember from time to time in hockey, or any sport at all, particularly at the high school level and below.  It is a bit long, but it provides a great break, and is worth watching.  It is completely safe to click on this link.

https://www.si.com/extra-mustard/2019/02/25/4-year-old-hockey-player-micd-practice-video

Thanks to our fellow reader, and contributing field reporter, John McLean for sending this in.

This Weekend’s Top Fifteen Match-ups

This week features a heck of a top-fifteen matchup as #1 St. Cloud State hosts #3 Minnesota-Duluth for two games — what a season-ender for both teams!  It’s the last weekend of regular season play for Hockey East and for the NCHC.  All four other conferences will start the first round of their conference tournaments, all best-of-three series on the home ice of the team that finished higher in the regular season conference standings:

Atlantic Hockey

• Army at Mercyhurst
• Canisius at Niagara
• Holy Cross at Robert Morris

Big Ten

• Michigan at Minnesota
• Michigan State at Notre Dame
• Wisconsin at Pennsylvania State

ECAC

• Princeton at Brown
• St. Lawrence at Dartmouth
• Colgate at Union
• Rensselaer at Yale

WCHA

• Alabama-Huntsville at #4 Mankato State
• Bemidji State at Lake Superior State
• Alaska-Faribanks at Northern Michigan
• Michigan Tech at #15 Bowling Green

This provides the top fiteen teams, rankings, records, and last week’s results:

[table id=193 /]

That’s all for now.  Stay tuned, and go Terriers!

— Tom