Dylan Reese is a take-no-crap defenseman with a nose for the net. Sound familiar?

How about this one: Dylan Reese came to Cambridge a highly touted prospect, and he has enjoyed an exceptional sophomore campaign. Still not familiar?

Then try this one: Dylan Reese, in just his second season on the Harvard men’s hockey team, has emerged as an evident leader. If that’s not ringing any bells, glance two spots down the numerical roster and you’ll find Noah Welch, the Crimson’s captain.

Reese and Welch have their differences—the most marked of which is apparent as the 6’1 sophomore and the 6’4 senior stand side by side—but the overarching connections remain nevertheless undeniable.

“It’s his personality,” explains Welch, the admitted owner of a fairly sizeable personality himself. “Dylan’s got a lot of confidence. He’s not a cocky kid, but he’s a pretty confident kid, and he’s a leader. In those qualities, I thought, I saw a lot of myself this year.”

And they were just the qualities Reese needed if he planned to discard memories of last season’s lingering nerve injury that sidelined the then-rookie for 15 games.

“I kind of wrote my freshman year off, personally, as just a bad year,” Reese says.

But as bad as it was for the Pittsburgh product, who spent all of December and January out of commission, it was worse for the Crimson, which went 5-9-1 during that stretch.

And while the floundering Crimson wasn’t grabbing any headlines, another of Reese’s squads was making national news.

Just after the New Year, the World Junior Championships were decided in Helsinki, Finland, and for the first time in its history, Team USA (for which Reese was selected, but for which he was too injured to skate) captured the gold.

“For a kid 18 to 20,” said then-coach Mark Mazzoleni of Reese’s selection, “this is like making the Olympics.”

But there would be no gold medal celebration for Reese, who could only read about the miraculous comeback from a third-period, 3-1 deficit in the championship game.

“Last year was rough,” Reese admits, “being hurt and missing the World Juniors and, I felt, never really establishing myself as a player that was always in the lineup and making an impact.”

His comrades on the ice would take issue with that last phrase, though.

“When he came back from his injury, he was, immediately, an impact player,” says Dave McCulloch ’04, who was paired with Reese for last season’s final eight games and miraculous playoff run.