After a season of personnel struggles and unmet expectations, the 2013-14 Harvard men’s hockey team will skate a younger and larger line-up against college hockey’s hottest conference.

It will not take much for the Crimson to improve upon its performance last season, which concluded with Yale defeating ECAC regular season champion Quinnipiac in the the national final. Harvard finished last in the regular season standings for the first time in ECAC history before falling to Dartmouth in three games in the first round of the conference postseason.

“We’re coming out of the cellar,” sophomore forward Brian Hart said. “There’s only one place to go and that’s up.”

The 2012-13 campaign included winless stretches of six and nine games through the middle of the regular season. For a time, Harvard’s power play ranked last among all Division I schools. The Crimson suffered from the early departures of then-sophomore blueliners Patrick McNally and Max Everson and a slew of injuries to an already-strained roster.

“I think last season was a difficult one; it was frustrating,” Harvard coach Ted Donato ’91 said. “I think we started out with one team and kind of ended with another.”

But the season was not without positive moments, including the Crimson’s first win over a No. 1-ranked opponent since 2004 with a late-season overtime victory over Quinnipiac at the Bright-Landry Hockey Center. Among Harvard’s other wins were a 6-5 overtime comeback at then-No.6 Boston University and a 4-1 win at then-No. 10 Cornell.

This year, Harvard will look to build off those same successes on a more consistent basis with a younger cast of players. Sophomore forwards Jimmy Vesey, Brian Hart and Kyle Criscuolo picked up important points for the Crimson during their rookie campaigns despite various injuries. Top freshmen recruits Alexander Kerfoot and Sean Malone will also help to fill the offensive void left by graduated seniors Alex Fallstrom, Marshall Everson, and Luke Greiner.

“We have a little bit more talent this year in terms of skill and offensive ability, so I think we’re going to play a different style,” Vesey said. “We’re going to score a lot more goals, and everyone’s going to contribute.”

From a forward corps that does not include a single senior, Harvard will also look toward freshmen forwards Luke Esposito and Phil Zielonka to make an immediate impact, along with junior Tommy O’Regan. One lingering question on offense is the health of junior Colin Blackwell, who missed the last six games of 2012-13.

Captain Dan Ford will lead a more experienced Harvard blueline into the 2013-14 campaign. The return of McNally and Everson is welcome news to a defensive rotation that carried only five healthy defensemen from its original roster at one point last year. With ten defensemen listed on the Crimson’s roster this year, it is unlikely that Donato will have to call up a defender from Harvard’s club team as he did last season.

For the first time in recent memory, Donato will have three goaltenders with significant collegiate playing time to call on. The return of junior Steve Michalek, who left Harvard before the start of the 2012-13 campaign, provides an extra option in the crease for the Crimson, which relied on second-year starter Raphael Girard and rookie backup Peter Traber last season. Donato has not yet committed to a single starter or a rotation system for 2013-14.

“It’ll be a competitive spot. I think [goaltending] has a chance to be a very solid position for us, a position of depth and also a position of strength,” Donato said. “There’ll be opportunity early on and we’ll see who kind of takes the ball and runs with it.”

The Crimson’s roster features nine NHL draft picks, the sixth-most in the NCAA and more than any other ECAC squad. Harvard enters this season with lower expectations than it did last year, but its raw talent has nevertheless drawn the attention of pollsters. With college hockey already underway for most non-Ivy schools, a 0-0-0 Crimson squad has still received multiple votes in the latest USCHO.com top-20 national rankings.

Donato has learned to take preseason forecasts with a grain of salt.

“We’ve lost the popularity polls and had some good teams and we’ve started off in the popularity polls pretty well and not done so well,” Donato said. “I’m not interested in being

in the top 20 at the beginning of the year. I think at the end of the season, we want to be a team that’s playing its best and has a chance to advance.”

Harvard has been tabbed to finish in the middle-of-the-pack in the ECAC coaches’ preseason poll and tenth in the writers’ poll. A record six different teams received first-place votes in the coaches’ poll, with Yale taking the top spot.

The media poll also reflected the conference’s parity, with five teams receiving first-place votes.

The Crimson will jump into conference play against media-favorite RPI in a home-and-home series Oct. 29 and Nov. 1. Regular season highlights will include a nationally televised game versus Yale at Madison Square Garden Jan. 11 and the 62nd Beanpot Tournament Feb. 3 and 11.

The team that will take the ice at the Bright-Landry Hockey Center this Saturday versus Bentley will look considerably different than the one that left Dartmouth’s Thompson Arena on the heels of a 6-3 elimination-game loss at the end of last season. Donato feels that Harvard has taken extra motivation from last season’s frustrations.

“After last year our team certainly has a little bit of a chip on their shoulder, and we have a lot to prove,” Donato said. “We’re excited to go forward and prove that we can be a good team.”

—Staff writer Michael D. Ledecky can be reached at michael.ledecky@thecrimson.com.