While the play obviously hurt in the context of the Crimson’s eventual loss to a major rival, the occasional on-ice fall is a common error—even great skaters stumble on a fairly regular basis. Still, it represented a temporary setback in Welch’s steadily improving reputation in hockey circles.

Stepping in the Right Direction

Welch has consistently improved over the past two-plus seasons. He earned a spot on the ECAC All-Rookie team his freshman year and garnered second-team All-Conference and second-team All-American honors a year ago. On September 22, he was named a pre-season All-ECAC team selection for this season. None of that improvement comes as a surprise to Mazzoleni.

“Noah took a very strong step forward from freshman to sophomore year and I think he will make a similar jump from sophomore to junior year,” he said. “He has the ability to control a game, and he needs to do that consistently now.”

“He’s even more of a dominant presence this year than last,” Grumet-Morris agreed. “His ability to control a defensive zone and to take over on the power play have increased exponentially.”

“He’s one of the marked players on the ice. He’s a difference maker.”

And those expectations add a lot of pressure onto Welch’s shoulders, something he struggled to accept at first.

“I put a lot of pressure on myself this summer, being an All-American last year on the second team,” Welch said. “I almost came into the season thinking I had to be at least a second-team All-American this year, or a first team. If I wasn’t a first team All-American then I wasn’t improved. I realized, luckily a week before the season, that’s not true. And if that’s my mentality, it’s only going to hurt me and the team.”

Benched

One way in which Welch has occasionally hurt the team is with penalties; he has struggled to avoid time in the box every year he has been at Harvard, and his penalty minute total is one of the highest on the team each year.

Nothing exemplifies this more explicitly than the penalty Welch took in the season opener against Brown. With the Crimson already penalized for having too many men on the ice, Welch took a cross-checking penalty 20 seconds in, giving the Bears 1:40 of a five-on-three advantage. That led to a Brown power play goal off the stick of Cory Caouette and led to Welch watching the next game against Vermont in a suit.

“This year, to be honest with you, I got off to a real slow start,” Welch said. “In the Brown game, I didn’t play my game and getting benched the second game kinda threw me off a little bit.”

The cross-checking penalty excepted, Mazzoleni feels that many of Welch’s penalties come from trying to do too much on the ice.

“With Noah, at times when our team needs a major boost or is struggling, he puts it all on his own shoulders,” Mazzoleni said.

“He may try to do too much,” he continued. “And you gotta respect someone for that, but if you work with the people around you, you can be more effective.”