"Michel left as a pretty good player," Tomassoni says, "and you got to think he's coming back as a better player."

In addition to those six, McCarthy and sophomore Marco Ferrari will add plenty of depth on defense.

Freshman Geordie Hyland is expected to join the lineup once he has recovered from a bout of mononucleosis.

"The guys on the team are great in helping [the freshmen] out," Famigletti says. "Everyone has accepted us, coming in as rookies and working our way on the team."

Tripp-ing

The biggest change for Harvard from last year to this will be in the goaltending situation. For the last six years, the Crimson had employed a goalie rotation where each of two netminders would alternate games played.

However, Harvard is left with junior Tripp Tracy as the only returning regular goalie from List year's squad, as Aaron Israel signed with the Philadelphia Flyers last spring.

The solid fundamentals of Israel will be missed, but Harvard still has one of the top goaltenders in the country in Tracy, who had a sensational freshman year and whose 3.01 goals against average last year wasn't too shabby either.

Senior Steve Hennsdorl will be called on to spell Tracy periodically throughout the season.

"A two-man rotation in the third year of the rotation gets very old and stale for the two individuals they're frustrated because they all want to play more." Tomassoni says. "In a funny kind of way we may be stronger in goal without the two of them."

Very Special Teams

Special-teams play was one of the biggest factors in Harvard's success last season.

The penalty killing units has all the potential to be as good as last year, especially when Holmes and Martins are Paired together. The two seemed to generate as many scoring chances a man down as the opposing team had with the power play.

"We're more experienced on penalty killing up front, but a little inexperienced on the blue line." Tomassoni says. "The best way of getting experience is playing games."

Four of the five men on the first power-play unit graduated last year, the sole returning player being Martins. Fariell and McCann anchored the power play along with Martins, but there are other talented players to fill in on the extra man unit this season.

Konik and Gustafson, who scored four times on the second man-up unit last season, will play up front around Martins, while the duos of Coaghhn/Farmgletti and Lonsinger/Halmight are expected to assume the roles at the point.