Joe Cavanagh ’71 laughs as he recalls questioning his son Tom after each of the boy’s youth hockey games.

“How’d you do?” Joe would ask Tom, the fifth of a nine-child brood. Joe was, of course, looking for goals and assists. “But he really couldn’t remember,” Joe says.

All young Tom could remember was which team had won and which had lost. It’s not so different from what you’ll get if you ask Tom today.

Flash forward 15 years, and you’ll find him a senior at Harvard, the assistant captain of the No. 9 Crimson, the team’s leading scorer and its most complete two-way skater to take the ice each night.

But it’s just about impossible to get that information out of him.

“He’s naturally inclined that way,” Joe says.

And if you want to know why, you need look no further than to Joe himself.

The elder Cavanagh was a three-time All-American for Harvard and one of the program’s most beloved skaters. Not that Joe, now a lawyer in Warwick, R.I., would ever tell you that, either.

“I suppose,” Joe says, “in the house, we never really talked about athletic accomplishments or things like that, because there are a lot of things that are more important.

“I think [Tom] just learned from that.”

In fact, Tom took it to heart. It’s nearly impossible to get the centerman waxing poetic about anything but the team. Team accomplishments. Team strengths. Team weaknesses. Team objectives.

Team, team, team.

“From a very young age,” Joe says, “the one part about Tom that I always thought stood out was that all he cared about was how the team did, and that was when he was six or seven. And it’s always been the same since.”

Take, for example, this fact: entering his senior year, the younger Cavanagh had never gone more than three games without a point.

Now, as his final season with the Crimson nears its end, Tom has 110 points to his name, and this despite remaining consistently marked by other teams.