For Harvard Coach Mark Mazzoleni, the honeymoon in net is over.

When the third-year coach took over the Harvard hockey program in 1999, he inherited two top-flight, upperclass goaltenders. The first, J.R. Prestifilippo ’00, was a four-year starter who finished his career second on Harvard’s all-time saves list. The second, Olivar Jonas ’01, turned in one of the best single seasons in Harvard history last year, winning the Ken Dryden Award as the ECAC’s best netminder in the process.

This season, Mazzoleni no longer has the luxury of starting a senior. Heck, before last weekend, he didn’t even have the option of playing someone with two games’ experience. Going into the team’s season opener against Brown, this year’s Crimson roster sported two goalies who had yet to play a game and one—sophomore Will Crothers, the team’s likely starter—who had played a grand total of four periods (80 minutes).

For a coach who believes that teams are built from the goal out, this is a slight problem.

“Correlate that to your point guard in basketball only having played 80 minutes. Or your quarterback in football,” Mazzoleni said.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When Mazzoleni brought Crothers in last year, he expected to play him right away. After sitting on the bench for three years behind Prestifilippo, Jonas was a bit of a question mark himself. And Crothers— who played junior hockey in Canada with the Aurora Tigers, where he was teammates with Harvard forward Dominic Moore—was a highly-touted young backstop.

“We expected to play Will a third to a quarter of the games last year to get his feet wet,” Mazzoleni said. “But Oliver Jonas shot out of the blocks like a cannon. From day one, he played so well for us that there wasn’t a lot of decision to be made.”

Jonas was, to say the least, a rock, setting records for most minutes played and most saves made in a season. Playing behind a young and error-prone defensive unit, Jonas was tested time and time again and invariably rose to the occasion. He made 35 saves or more in nearly a third of Harvard’s games. On some nights, it seemed that he literally won the game by himself.

“I’ve said it before—our ability to have a winning record last year was in a great amount due to the quality goaltending that we had,” Mazzoleni said. “Jonas stole games for us, no doubt about it.”

Not many people were expecting Jonas’ incredible season-long performance. Except, perhaps, for Crothers.

“When I came into camp and saw how good [Jonas] was, then I wasn’t surprised,” Crothers said.

With Jonas stealing the show, Crothers only played one full game, a Dec. 7 meeting with Brown. It was a fairly painless initiation—last Saturday’s loss to Brown notwithstanding, the Bears were the worst team in the ECAC last year. Crothers turned in a respectable performance in his collegiate debut, making 22 saves in a 5-3 win.

Over the course of the season, Crothers and Jonas became pretty good friends. Jonas was paired with Crothers in the team’s Big Brother program and the two also roomed together on the road. Along the way, Jonas also passed on a few tips to his protege.

“He showed me some things about stick positioning and keeping an upright stance,” Crothers said.

Now that the torch has been passed, Crothers has been thrown into much the same fire as Jonas was. With the exception of senior captain Pete Capouch, Harvard’s blueliners remain a fuzzy-cheeked group. Of the seven of them, three are freshmen and three are sophomores. As Mazzoleni warns, “They’re going to make mistakes.”