After an emotional win over Massachusetts last month, Harvard coach Mark Mazzoleni held a high-energy press conference during which he told the assembled hockey scribes that his varsity, which had just beaten the nation’s No. 8 team, was “not that talented.”

“I don’t know where the perception is that we’re talented,” he said then.

“We have 12 kids that are drafted [by NHL teams], but a lot of them are drafted on size and potential.”

To some, Mazzoleni’s words suggested a strained relationship between a coach and his team. But Crimson captain Kenny Smith, himself a 6’2, 215-pound Edmonton Oilers draftee, said that is not the case.

“When we went on a little slide, the captains had a meeting with the coaching staff. We said, ‘Be harder on us. In practice, get in our face. If we’re not giving 100 percent, go bananas if you want, get right in our faces,’” Smith said last week. “That’s something they do, anyway, but us saying that to them and talking about it was helpful.”

Smith said the team has to “take certain comments for what they’re worth.”

“You listen to the criticism, and you let it fire you up a bit,” he said.

“When something Coach says to you is a little heavy, you know he just wants to see you playing your best.

“We knew Coach was going to be extremely intense. That’s something you always get out of Coach Mazz. We’re ready for the paper stuff, and we use it the proper way. If he gets in your face, no one takes anything personally.

It’s just about being prepared to play hockey games.”

Smith said that conversation among Harvard players rarely centers on the fact that a dozen of them have been drafted by NHL teams.

“A lot of people talk about the draft picks in relation to our team. You can use it to make good points, and you can use it to make bad points, but we don’t focus on that at all,” Smith said. “We very rarely talk about the teams we’ve been drafted by, or who’s drafted. It’s really a non-issue.

“We have 26 guys who play Harvard hockey, and that’s what we’re focusing on. Really, the only time pro stuff comes up is when students here ask about it. They want to know what it’s all about, and that’s fine.

“But right now, all we’re concerned with is just trying to win games in the Harvard jersey.”

UVM Finds a New Groove

After a whirlwind courtship, Vermont’s move to Hockey East, effective for the 2005-2006 season, became official with yesterday’s news conference in Burlington.

With that, the ECAC Division I men’s hockey league went from 12 schools to 11.

“You’re disappointed,” Mazzoleni said when asked about Vermont’s move. “I think Vermont is a school in our league that has the capabilities to play on the national level. That hasn’t happened right now, and I’m sure it’s going to take Coach [Kevin] Sneddon [’92] a few years to get pointed in that direction.

“But they’ve been a big part of the ECAC … From a coach’s standpoint, there’s no malice [toward them for leaving]. They have to do what they have to do.”

It is hard to fault Vermont and athletic director Bob Corran for making the move.

Hockey East wants Vermont because it is one of the most storied college hockey programs in New England. Vermont wants to be in Hockey East because the schools in that league are a better fit with its academic and athletic profiles than those of the ECAC.

So Hockey East, the best Eastern league—right now, at least—has its sought-after 10th team. And the ECAC, which has slipped competitively since the creation of Hockey East in the mid-1980s, is without the team that was expected to be one of the leaders in the league’s return to national prominence.

What, then, can the ECAC do now?

One option is to find a 12th team, one that fits within its travel partner system and has similar academic and athletic profiles.

The name that keeps popping up is Holy Cross, which has been a solid, developing program in the Atlantic Hockey conference (formerly the MAAC) and has a 12-4-2 record this season.

Holy Cross has a good academic reputation, is a member of the Patriot League with ECAC hockey school Colgate, and would be a natural travel partner for Brown, with Harvard taking Vermont’s place as a partner with Dartmouth.

Wait, though. Before we go on a Crusade to include Woo-town in the company of New Haven as a be-sure-to-lock-your-car-doors ECAC town, let’s pose this important question: Does the ECAC really need a 12th team?

As a matter of fact, it doesn’t.

Here’s why. The ECAC could easily abandon its travel partner scheduling. Weekend series would consist of two games at one site, a departure from the current arrangement which includes a Friday game at one school followed by a Saturday game at the other. The two-game, one-site system would alleviate the scheduling problems that Brown and Yale have because their travel partners—Harvard and Princeton, respectively—break for exams in January while they want to keep playing.

The Crimson would play five road series and five home series a season. One year, for example, it would go to Cornell’s Lynah Rink for two games. The next year, the Big Red would come to Bright Hockey Center for a pair.

OK, let that sink in a second…Yeah…Uh-huh…That’d be fun, wouldn’t it?

Also, staying at 11 teams would cut the number of ECAC games to 20, freeing up two regular-season dates for Harvard and other Ivy League schools under the 29-game Ivy cap.

That would be a blessing for Harvard, which is handcuffed in its non-conference schedule by two Beanpot games, annual dates with Boston College and Boston University and two games in a holiday tournament. That leaves Mazzoleni with only one game to work with each year.

But if he gets two more, the Crimson would be able to take on two additional opponents, most likely Western powers—how about Michigan and Minnesota every year—instead of burning two games against Holy Cross (or another entrant) that will struggle upon entering the ECAC.

It’s simple, really. Wins against Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin do wonders for a team’s Ratings Percentage Index. Wins against Holy Cross, or Mercyhurst and Quinnipiac (also mentioned as ECAC candidates) wouldn’t help a team’s RPI nearly as much. And the RPI gets a team into the NCAA tournament.

From Harvard’s standpoint, as well as that of the other ECAC schools, this is an easy decision.

Lining up support

This morning, the NCAA convention opens in Nashville. It’s the beginning of the end of a long fight by officials at three ECAC Division I hockey schools (Clarkson, Rensselaer and St. Lawrence) and WCHA power Colorado College to maintain Division I men’s hockey scholarships while keeping an overall Division III profile.

Proposal 65, which would affect four additional schools in other sports, forbids Division III schools from “playing up” at Division I with scholarships.

Rensselaer athletic director Ken Ralph said after the Harvard-Rensselaer game last Saturday that about 70 percent of schools are prepared to vote against Proposal 65.

“We’ll call that a positive,” Ralph said, “but until I see the results on the board, I’m not going to consider anything official. We’re going to keep working hard until we see the final results.”

“We know some people will change their minds at the convention, probably away from us, but we feel pretty good about where things are.”

Ralph and the ADs and presidents at other seven schools have kept track of votes using a Big Board of sorts.

“It’s very similar to a political campaign,” Ralph said.

—Staff writer Jon P. Morosi can be reached at morosi@fas.harvard.edu.