“I tried just be fair, and to say that whatever decision that he had come to, I would back him up 100 percent,” Donato said. “I would understand if [Cavanagh, a San Jose draft pick] wanted to go get his knee fixed now and get better for the next hockey at the professional level for him.”

Of course, Cavanagh didn’t want to look ahead.

“He wasted no time and said, ‘Coach, I want to play,’” Donato said. “To be honest with you, I was jumping for joy inside when he said that.”

Assured by doctors and trainers that any additional damage would be correctable, Cavanagh continued, with the help of a brace, to lace up and skate.

Says the MGH site, “the person [with a torn ACL] can usually run straight ahead and ride a bicycle without difficulty.”

Which would be great, except that Cavanagh was intent on skating the length of the ice for 60 minutes a night, not walking or riding a bicycle.

“If a person does not participate in pivoting sports and is relatively inactive,” the site reads, “the knee can feel quite normal without an ACL.”

Which would be great, except that the Crimson was anything but inactive, trudging through 12 games in 30 days, followed by the playoffs.

“Him lacing his skates up every day, and just coming down to the rink and playing like he does,” Welch said, “that’s why he’s one of our captains.”

In last weekend’s ECAC semifinal against Colgate, Cavanagh carried the puck through the Raiders’ zone with a defenseman heaped on either side. Cavanagh heaved a shot on net, and as he and the two Colgate skaters crashed the net, he knocked home his own rebound.

Donato called it “one of the nicest goals all year for us.”

“He’s just such a great competitor in big games,” he said. “It’s a tribute to him that he’s battled through what most people probably would have found as an excuse. I’m proud to be able to say I coached Tom Cavanagh.”

But Cavanagh—who, as of last Saturday, had been waiting to schedule the corrective surgery until the season had ended—didn’t see himself as “battling through” anything.

And while Donato admitted that “there was a part of me that really found it difficult to bite my tongue, because to me, it was one of the most courageous stories in all of college hockey this year,” Cavanagh harbored no such inclinations.

The senior admitted, in a rare moment, that his knee was “sore,” and that it showed “some aggravation and swelling.” But that was it. No more.