“We were all cheering behind the net,” Vukonich adds. “And Teddy didn’t even want to hug any of us. He’s just standing there with his arms in the air, screaming, ‘PTP!’”

Of course, that year they were all prime-time players, destined to capture the Crimson’s lone NCAA championship. But even on a roster featuring two members of the 1988 United States Olympic team and the 1989 Hobey Baker winner, none elevated his game like Donato.

“He was a big game player,” MacDonald says. “The bigger the game, the better he played. Teddy loved the big games. He got himself up for the big games and he always produced.”

And that year, no two contests were bigger than Harvard’s pair in the Frozen Four. Donato’s contribution? A couple of assists and the game-winning goal against Michigan State in the semifinals, and two tallies against Minnesota in the championship. His reward? The tournament’s most outstanding player honors to complement his newly won title.

Though his junior and senior seasons wouldn’t net the same result, Donato never hesitated to embrace the increasingly steep share of the offensive burden that was heaped upon his and his linemates’ shoulders, particularly in his final year when he was both captain and a member of the first line. Then, as today, the top trio wore green jerseys when practicing, a coincidence not lost on Donato or his teammates.

“He’s a money kid,” netminder Chuckie Hughes ’92 told The Crimson in 1991. “He wears that green in practice with pride. When the pressure is on and the money is down, he’s the guy you want to go to.”

Of course, Hughes, who’d skated with Donato for three years at Catholic Memorial before attending Harvard, had merely been recycling a nickname he had not himself invented.

“Pete [Ciavaglia] and I never said that,” Vukonich says. “Who do you think came up with that? That was Teddy. He dubbed us the money line with the green jerseys. And that’s Teddy. Money player, money line.”

THE TOWEL BOY

Off the ice and in the equipment office, Donato wasn’t much different—just a whole lot more dangerous with a van at his disposal. Often tasked to deliver freshly laundered towels to the athletic facilities around campus, Donato quickly mastered the most direct routes between Soldier’s Field, the Malkin Athletic Center, and his various other destinations—much to the chagrin of his passengers.

“You don’t ever want to do a towel run with Ted Donato,” says Vermont coach and former Harvard defenseman Kevin Sneddon ’92. “He could do it in about 30 seconds and that involved going up on curbs. For me, being from a small town in Canada, I’d never seen driving like that.”

Ciavaglia and Vukonich had. Donato’s co-workers and fellow Kirkland House residents, the pair found themselves on the receiving end of more than one of the future Crimson coach’s pranks.

The proud owners of a new Volkswagen Rabbit they had purchased for 800 dollars, Ciavaglia and Vukonich happened to be leaving work one day, minding their own business, when Donato and his roommate, Scott Barringer ’91, thought they’d have a little fun with their friends.

“They took the van,” Vukonich says, “and gave us a good bump right into traffic and gave us a nice little dent in our car. They did that a couple of times.”

Which of course explains a second aspect of Donato’s legend across the River—the product of his penchant for disappearing on towel runs and returning with a van that wasn’t quite the van it used to be, on more than one occasion.