And that, as Harvard’s captain says, is hockey.

HANSON RECOVERING

Those relationships from team to team and player to player are never more evident than in trying times. Most recently, the tightness of the college hockey community has been demonstrated in the three weeks since Vermont goaltender Matt Hanson fractured his fourth cervical vertebrae.

Hanson sustained the injury during a Feb. 12 practice and underwent surgery soon afterward. The Catamounts visited him at his home in Peabody on their way to last Friday’s game at Bright, and he was in attendance—standing and walking under his own—during his team’s 6-4 win.

He chatted with numerous people during the game, including Crimson sophomore Dan Murphy, a North Andover native who played five seasons of youth hockey with Hanson and was a friend of his growing up.

“He seemed pretty upbeat about his recovery,” Murphy said. “He’s got about nine months of recovery ahead of him, but the doctors say he can play hockey again.

“He was talking really quietly. He’s still a little weak and that was his first time being out, but he looked good and he’s walking. Ninety percent of the people who have his injury end up in a wheelchair, so he’s doing something right.”

Fried played with Hanson at Deerfield and remembers him as “quite a character.”

“Everyone knows him and everyone loves him,” Fried said. “We’re all glad to see him back on his feet.”

NOAH BALBOA?

Yet another storyline to this weekend’s playoff series is the altercation that occurred between Sifers and Harvard junior defenseman Noah Welch at 14:59 of the first period last Friday.

Almost immediately after Jeff Miles scored to tie the game 1-1, a scrum took place around the Harvard goal, with Sifers and Welch the primary pugilists.

Welch insisted the altercation was “nothing against” Sifers personally. “He’s their team leader, and I consider myself one of the leaders on our team, and I didn’t like some of the stuff that was going on in the game,” Welch said. “Everyone’s trying to blow this up as a Sifers-Welch thing, but it’s just that he’s wearing the ‘C’ now.”

Specifically, Welch was responding to what he said was a deliberate butt-end to Pettit that went uncalled earlier in the period. Pettit retaliated and was sent to the box for hitting after the whistle.

“The whole team saw it, and we didn’t like it,” Welch said. “In college hockey, you have a lot of fake tough guys because there’s no fighting, so you can get away with a lot of stuff, and that was a blatant butt-end. I thought they were gaining confidence from a couple of cheap shots, and after they scored the goal, Sifers was kind of yapping, so I decided to do something about it.”