“Uhh, this weekend we were playing Yale in the second round. Even if it wasn’t the best time, there was no way I wasn’t going to try and play. So that’s pretty much the answer for that one.”
***
McNally expresses his love for his team in an understated way. Given a similar situation, most elite prospects would likely focus on their long-term health. But for McNally, the decision to come back this season was a natural one.
“He’s always been the kid to put the team first and always wants to play for his team over the individual goals and stuff,” Delia says. “So I knew he was going to do whatever he could to get back in the game as quickly as possible.”
Nothing would mean more to McNally than a team championship. He’s been there once before, captaining Milton Academy (Mass.) to its first and only New England Prep School Championship under coach Paul Cannata.
McNally arrived at Milton from a relatively obscure Long Island club as a fourth-year junior. Nobody at the Massachusetts boarding school knew exactly how good the incoming defenseman would be. He quickly commanded a leading role in his first year and blitzed the prep circuit for the overall scoring title in his second, title-winning season.
“He led the world in points that year,” Cannata laughs over the phone on Wednesday. He recalls that McNally came to Milton with a “strong slant” toward committing to Yale. “Everyday he would come into the rink with that sort of optimistic, upbeat, let’s-go-play-hockey attitude.”
Cannata feels that McNally’s decision to return reflects a special mindset.
“Patrick has a stubborn streak to him that serves him well,” Cannata says. “And in this case, I know that there are some quality people around him who advised him that this was probably not a smart thing to do, and quite frankly, it probably wasn’t.”
That’s not to say that Cannata thinks that McNally shouldn’t have returned.
“If you’re going to do things at a high level, you have to have a different way of thinking,” Cannata says. “Whatever domain you’re in…to be that successful in your particular domain, you have to think differently than 99.99 percent of the rest of the people.”
For Cannata, McNally is part of that 0.01 percent—that rare breed of player who dares to think differently. This weekend, McNally and the Crimson will compete for a conference title at Herb Brooks Arena—the site of the 1980 Miracle On Ice. Whether or not McNally’s return is similarly “miraculous,” his story this last week has read like a Disney movie.
“To come from not playing...to then playing three games in three nights, to then getting the game-tying goal late in the third period and getting the assist on the game-winner in double overtime, it’s almost a script,” Cannata says. “People don’t realize the qualities of these kids who do those things. Let’s just say they don’t grow on trees, my friend.”
—Crimson staff writer Michael D. Ledecky can be reached at michael.ledecky@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @mdledecky.