In his third season with the Harvard men’s hockey team, junior defenseman Noah Welch has already drawn accolades for his play, both from ECAC coaches and from others around the country.

Recently retired Vermont coach Mike Gilligan said Welch was one of the best college defensemen he had seen. Boston College coach Jerry York said that Welch “is developing into one of the top rear guards in the country.” And at the end of last season, Welch was named a second team All-American by a national vote.

Despite those accolades from opposing coaches and nation-wide recognition, Welch has struggled at times with his role as the Crimson’s defensive leader, and many of those slips have been magnified by the highly publicized nature of the games they came in.

Puck Awareness

Harvard coach Mark Mazzoleni lauds Welch’s quickness, long reach, and physical play in the defensive zone, a combination that does not always go together. Listed at 6’4 and 212 lbs., Welch has the size to out-muscle nearly every forward who crosses his blue line. What is unusual is to have that strength and size combined with his skating ability.

“Noah is a big guy who can move,” Mazzoleni said. “He can close on people with his feet, take away their space on defense.”

Welch’s ability to take away a forward’s position is highlighted by his battles with Dartmouth’s hulking left-wing Hugh Jessiman, Maine’s diminutive spark plug Martin Kariya, and BC’s quick-skating Ben Eaves.

Mazzoleni purposely matches Welch against Jessiman, believing that his All-American defenseman has the size necessary to move the 6’5 Jessiman off the puck. And against smaller, faster forwards like Eaves and Kariya, Welch uses his long reach to poke the puck away before those players can maneuver too far into the Harvard end. His play against Kariya and the rest of Maine’s talented forwards impressed Black Bear coach Tim Whitehead.

“Welch is great, he’s outstanding,” Whitehead said. “His poise with the puck, his strength on the puck. He’s very defensively aware. I think he’s a very good player.”

Falling Down

But before his success against BC or Maine, Welch suffered his first setback of last season in Ithaca. While most Harvard fans were watching the Harvard-Yale football game, the hockey team had traveled to upstate New York to face rival Cornell.

Trailing the favored Big Red 2-1 early in the second period, Welch fell flat on the ice, freeing up Cornell forward Greg Hornby for an easy point-blank goal that junior goaltender Dov Grumet-Morris could not stop.

Grumet-Morris, though, did not see the trip up as a major incident, noting that, “when you log a lot of minutes, you’re more likely to make a mistake,” Grumet-Morris said.

And the rest of Welch’s teammates felt the same way.

“I do get a lot of ice time, but [the fall against Cornell] was a freak thing,” Welch said. “But I went back to the bench and the guys were supportive. We were laughing about it later.”