“There’s no definitive list,” Halligan says. “But off the top of my head, over the course of the years, I’d say no more than 20.”

Less than two dozen Jews in more than seven dozen years.

“We’ve never had this many Jewish skaters on the team,” says Grumet-Morris, the Crimson’s starting netminder for the lion’s share of his four years at Harvard. “There aren’t too many [Jews] in hockey.”

But the three-Jew team?

“It’s kind of cool,” Grumet-Morris says. “It’s something interesting.”

Though certainly not what the makers of the 1980 comedy Airplane! had in mind when, in one of the better-known clips, a stewardess distributes hefty magazines, only to find a passenger who desires some lighter reading.

“How about this leaflet?” the stewardess asks, thrusting forward a flimsy piece of paper. “Famous Jewish sports legends.”

Grumet-Morris smiles—he remembers the scene.

But when he graduates in June, the kosher-keeping senior will take with him 13 school records. The legend of Grumet-Morris already exists.

Of the 41 varsity sports Harvard boasts, the Jew-less teams are fewer and farther between than you might think.

But then again, here at Harvard, there are more than five Jews for every 280 students.

So is the Jews-can’t-play-sports stereotype based on some truth?

Or do Jews simply pursue other fields of interest?

Or is the whole theory of under-representation invalid altogether, seeing as how Jews make up less than two percent of the entire United States population anyhow?

There’s no one answer to these questions.

But just ask any ECAC hockey player who has tried to stop Andrew Lederman on the power play, or who has tried to pick a fight with Dylan Reese in the defensive zone, or who has tried to slip the puck past Dov Grumet-Morris in the crease, and they’ll all tell you the same thing.

Those Jews are nasty hockey players.

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