“Growing up, what he stressed is to be that complete player, and [to have] that work ethic,” Tom adds. “ I’d like to think I developed some of that from him.”

Physical and fearless on the ice, Tom is Harvard’s go-to face-off guy. And he is the only active senior to skate in every possible career contest—all 128 to date.

“It’s good luck,” Tom says. “Honestly, I think I’ve been lucky. Aside from when I broke my arm when I was about 14, I’ve never had a real, serious injury.

“Even with the knee thing,” he adds, alluding to the hyper-extended joint with which he skated earlier this season. “It wasn’t that big of an injury. So I don’t think it’s that I’ve played through things. It’s that I’ve been lucky not to get injured.”

What else did you expect him to say, really?

Nearly everyone refers to Cavanagh as a “quiet leader,” a man of few words, and it’s unlikely that he’ll waste them bragging about himself.

“When he does open his mouth,” says Tyler Kolarik ‘04, Cavanagh’s Harvard teammate for three years, “Tommy’s a good guy, a great kid.”

It’s just that Cavanagh doesn’t open his mouth that often.

“People say I’m pretty quiet,” he admits, laughing. “And that always been the way I’ve been. I don’t know why.”

But goaltender Dov Grumet-Morris, Tom’s classmate, has a theory.

“He doesn’t have to [talk a lot],” Grumet-Morris says. “He knows he’s that good, and he doesn’t need to say it.”

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