Fifteen years ago, Port-au-Prince teetered on the brink of chaos, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney held the president’s ear in Washington and Kevin Sneddon ’92 prepared for ECAC playoff hockey at Bright Hockey Center.

Funny how little things change.

Except this time Sneddon won’t be the feisty freshman spearheading the Crimson defense with his hard-nosed play at the blue line.

He’ll be behind the Vermont bench.

And though the position is not entirely unfamiliar—Sneddon’s Catamounts handed Harvard a humbling 6-4 defeat last Friday evening and his Union squads traveled to Cambridge during his five-year tenure in Schenectady—this weekend’s best-of-three series marks the first time the trip will fall during the postseason.

“I know he obviously views his Harvard experience with fondness,” said Vermont assistant John Micheletto. “But he’s been in the game now a good number of years where he’s had to face his alma mater.”

And though he’s only just arrived in Burlington after leaving behind his post at the Dutchmen helm, his loyalty already runs deep. Something of a surprise hire given the high-profile national search for the next Catamounts coach and the experience of some of the names batted around as potential suitors for the position, Sneddon has wasted little time showing that the decision was no mistake.

“I wouldn’t say it was expected,” said Allain Roy ’92, Sneddon’s former teammate and roommate. “But for people who knew him it was expected. People said he was young, but he was ready for that job.”

Accepting Vermont’s head coaching position wasn’t quite the same as taking on the Union job.

The youngest coach in the ECAC when he first took over the Dutchmen in 1998, Sneddon replaced Stan Moore, who had held the role for just two years.

Instead, he would take the place of legendary UVM coach Mike Gilligan, who’d been at the helm for the Catamounts since Sneddon was a freshman in high school.

“He was filling some pretty big shoes,” Roy said. “Coach Gilligan was there for I don’t know how many years. He was basically the mayor of Burlington.”

And for most coaches that might have posed a problem. But Sneddon, still the charismatic hard worker who served as Crimson captain his senior season despite injuries his final two years that limited his play, earned the trust of his current players even before being selected for the job.

“A lot of programs will get the players involved during the hiring process,” Roy said. “The players are the ones who really pushed for him to get the job and that says a lot of him.”

Not that the squad hasn’t hit bumps in the road along the way. The Catamounts opened their season with a 13-game winless streak that threatened to carry over into the team’s Christmas holiday. But while the faith of most players in their young coach might have wavered, Vermont’s skaters remained steadfast.