"My basic priority was to play right away when I got to college," Blair says.

Down in Cambridge, the Crimson was enjoying its last year with senior goaltender Wade Lau, and was searching desperately for someone to fill his spot on a young team that advanced to the NCAA Tournament.

"The big thing we had to stress was the definite need for a goaltender to take charge," said Val Belmonte, the Harvard assistant coach who recruited Blair and now coaches at Illinois-Chicago.

For Belmonte, spotting Blair was easy. "Certain players catch your eye. They have the type of oomph you like to see in a goaltender. I saw him against Richmond Hill in November around Thanksgiving.

"We paid attention to him," Belmonte says. "In May, I was up in Prince Albert. We had a sincere interest in him. I called Bill [Harvard Coach Cleary] after I learned about him and said, `I got the one for us.'"

"At times he got penalties, but I saw that as a positive, not a negative. If you're a goaltender, it's not that good to be passive."

Among the many other teams courting Blair was Cornell. The Big Red wanted a netminder to sit a single season behind its starter, Darren Eliot, and then play for three years.

Cornell Coach Lou-Reycroft came to Blair's house in Stoney Creek.

Reycroft was making a last bid to get the highly touted goalie into a Big Red jersey for four years.

"I thought he'd be a tough recruit," Reycroft says. "Harvard was graduating both of their varsity goalies and we had our starting goalie coming back."

That afternoon Reycroft told Blair, "If you go to Harvard, you'll never make it to the NHL."

"That was his mistake," recalls the Crimson's senior netminder.

"I think an hour after he said that I called him and said, `Well Lou, I'm going to see if I can make the NHL through Harvard.'"

Has he looked back after that decision? Part Two tomorrow