“Just another save,” Tobe explained modestly. “You’ve got to make those sometimes.”

He later added, “I expect that kind of performance out of me...The goalie’s always got to play well for the team to win.”

And Tobe had better expect that kind of performance from himself, for Harvard fans have been spoiled of late. It has become easy for the casual fan to assume, based on Grumet-Morris’s showings over the past 13 months, that only one or two goals should ever be allowed in a contest.

And Tobe knew exactly what he was getting himself into when he chose the Crimson.

After one disappointing year at Michigan State, Tobe spent the next season with the USHL’s Danville Wings, the same program for which Grumet-Morris had once skated.

“Obviously, I got a lot about Dov from playing in the same junior organization,” the sophomore explained, “and the coaching staff there had good things to say about him. Everything you hear about Dov is positive.”

After a year with the Wings, in which Tobe played 53 regular season games for a total of 3039:28 with a 2.76 goals against average, he packed his bags and moved to Cambridge to join Grumet-Morris, completing, with junior John Daigneau, the team’s trio of goaltenders. There was no question, when the sophomore arrived, that Grumet-Morris had cemented the starting job. No question whatsoever.

“You come in with a guy who’s been playing for two and a half years now, and he’s done a good job, so you can’t expect to just walk in and take his job,” Tobe admitted in October. “He’ll be there—he’ll be playing.”

Instead, the newcomer had proposed, “I don’t want to lay out exact [plans]—play this many games, do this or do that. But I just want to go out, work hard in practice every day, and hopefully get a chance from the coaching staff to play. That’s really all I could ask for.”

But now, Tobe’s gotten his chance—two of them, in fact—and he’s made the most of both. Said captain Noah Welch after the sophomore’s first start against Clarkson, “Tobe stepping in tonight is proof to us that we have three legit goalies that can play.”

“It’s good,” Welch said, “especially as a defenseman, knowing that the guy behind you is going to make that save.”

It’s good for the fans, too, to know that next year, when Grumet-Morris is long-gone, Harvard won’t have to start all over.

And it’s good for Donato—and Grumet-Morris, for that matter—to know that the senior starter can get a night’s rest when the occasion calls for it.

Right now, the situation in the Crimson crease is all-around good.

—Staff writer Rebecca A. Seesel can be reached at seesel@fas.harvard.edu.