The last time the Harvard men’s hockey team made the fabled trek to the twin hamlets of Canton and Potsdam, N.Y., it was greeted with bitterly cold weather and tall newspaper headlines.

It was the ultimate dust-up, a drama with more twists, turns, and subplots than the diary of a swooning 13-year-old. The North Country—the quirky community so close to the St. Lawrence River that most people on the radio parlent le français—buzzed with the kind of everyone-knows-everyone gossip only small towns can produce. Not surprisingly, college hockey was the subject.

After all, the Clarkson Golden Knights and St. Lawrence Saints, who play on campuses standing only a 20-minute drive apart, shepherd their respective communities through subzero winters and drive the local economy. And for a decade and a half, Mark Morris was the czar of Clarkson’s hockey empire.

That was, until Nov. 15, 2002, when he was fired after 15 seasons, 306 wins, nine NCAA tournament appearances—and one afternoon game in which he responded, either justifiably or inappropriately (depending on your take), to physical aggression from Zach Schwan, one of his players.

The incident was reported to the university, and, with the relationship between Morris and Clarkson administrators in a state of disrepair, he found little support there. Following a 10-day investigation, Morris was fired, shortly before that night’s Harvard-St. Lawrence and Brown-Clarkson games.

“He was taken advantage of,” said Michigan State head coach Rick Comley, who at one point had agreed to testify on Morris’ behalf. “It was totally unnecessary, unneeded and unfair.”

Harvard is back in the North Country this weekend. Morris is not. He finished last season in the Vancouver Canucks organization, hoping that would lead to a fresh start in college hockey. It didn’t. He applied for coaching jobs in the ECAC over the summer—some of which he probably could’ve walked into a year ago—but got barely a nibble.

Apparently, athletic directors saw him as damaged goods, no matter how good his credentials are otherwise. So, the only thing Morris can do now is wait…and work…and hope. “I just hope that time eliminates whatever perceptions there are out there,” he said in a recent telephone interview.

Morris was able to put the incident behind him—in a legal sense, at least—when he settled his lawsuit with Clarkson in August, but began this season without a coaching job. About two months ago, however, he became an interim assistant with the Saginaw (Mich.) Spirit of the Ontario Hockey League—“interim” being the operative word.

Morris, after all, grew up in the North Country, his family still lives there, and his wife is an attorney there. His parents live there. His wife’s parents live there. Morris built his entire life there. Unfortunately, lives are hard to move when the word “interim” is involved.

“I wouldn’t wish this on anyone, to go through what my family has gone through,” he said.

Morris has four children, all of whom play hockey. He doesn’t get to watch them. Nor does he get to see his wife every day. Instead, he’s several hundred miles from home, coaching a young, struggling hockey team in an unfamiliar town.

Everything—everything—feels so temporary. “Right now, my life is on hold,” Morris said. “It has been for quite awhile now.”

You wonder how long it will take an athletic director to see Morris’ record for what it is and help pull him off college hockey’s equivalent of Alcatraz.

Again, consider his record. His win totals and NCAA appearances are impressive enough on their own, but they become even more so when you consider what Morris was up against. Think back to when you were 18. If you were being recruited by schools in Boston, Minneapolis, Colorado Springs and Potsdam, which town would be No. 4 on your list?