“They’ve made things a lot easier for me,” Moore said of his brothers. “I sort of had the red carpet rolled out for me by them, especially with Mark having gone first and having plowed the way.”

Mark is now in the Phoenix system, while Steve is still with his original drafters, the Colorado Avalanche.

“With every Canadian kid, his dream is to play pro hockey,” Dominic said. “That’s what they love to do. They’re in no hurry to join corporate America.”

Moore himself is property of the New York Rangers and will pursue pro-hockey after graduation.

“[Dominic] has always had superior skill and talent, and over the last few years his size and strength have improved,” Mark Moore said. “I think that it would be foolish of anyone to put a limit on how good he might someday be.”

Back on Track

Fans that have followed Moore since his freshman days saw him explode onto the Harvard hockey scene with 12 goals in his first year. His monster rookie season earned him ECAC All-Rookie honors as well as the Ivy League Rookie of the Year.

Moore was even more dominant as a sophomore, racking up 43 points en route to Second-Team All-ECAC and First Team All-Ivy selections. Great things were expected of him last year, but Moore suffered a disappointing season that saw his point total drop to 29.

“I maybe got caught up in trying to get 60 points,” Moore said. “I felt I probably got caught up in that too much last year instead of focusing on being in the moment, which is sort of my key phrase. That’s what I’m going to try to do this year.”

During a particularly bad slide last season, Moore was benched for one game—a 6-0 thrashing of Vermont.

“[Harvard] coach [Mark Mazzoleni] felt that by sitting me down for a game, he might motivate me to play more up to his expectations,” Moore said.

Creative differences contributed to the player-coach conflict.

“I’m a creative player, and a lot of times I may have bucked the system [Mazzoleni] had been trying to enforce,” Moore said.

Moore began to refocus on playing hockey for the fun in it—not for the individual numbers—around playoff time. It showed during an amazing ECAC championship run, as Moore scored in all four tournament games.

The highlight came on his double-loop, double-overtime game-winning goal against Brown. The play, which punched Harvard’s ticket to Lake Placid, became an instant Crimson classic.