Blackwell finding a role on Harvard hockey team

BOSTON – St. John’s Prep graduate Colin Blackwell, now a sophomore at Harvard, stood outside the Crimson locker room at TD Garden on Monday, after his team had lost to Boston College, 4-1, in the first round of the 61st annual Beanpot.While the Crimson are struggling – they dropped to 5-15-1 with the loss and will return to the all-too-familiar Beanpot consolation – it sounds like Blackwell, a forward, is finding a niche on the team.Coach Ted Donato, a 1991 Harvard graduate and former Boston Bruins player, has placed Blackwell on a line with senior Alex Fallstrom (Stockholm, Sweden) and sophomore Tommy O’Regan (a fellow Bay Stater, from Needham and St. Sebastian’s).”Me, Tommy and Fallie are pretty close,” Blackwell said. “Tommy’s one of my good friends. It got pretty loud out there, but we seem to know where each other are.”Blackwell finished with four shots in the game, two of which were stopped by Eagles goalie Parker Milner, one that was blocked by Isaac MacLeod and one that went wide.”We had some chances from that line,” Donato said. “Blackwell created some good chances, O’Reilly had some nice passes. Milner made some big saves. In general, not a lot of teams are going to win trading chances against BC.”Of the strategy of shooting, Blackwell said, “It’s one of those things. Puck to the net. No shot’s a bad shot.”In fact, he lamented the low number of shots taken by Harvard in its previous game, a 3-0 loss to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in which the Crimson could muster just 11 attempts at the net.Against BC, Blackwell also took four faceoffs, winning one.The Crimson were in this game against the Eagles, who are the defending national champions as well as the three-time defending Beanpot champs. Harvard only trailed 1-0 after an Eagles’ goal at the end of the first period. Up until the final two minutes of the second period, it stayed a 1-0 game ? until the Eagles scored two straight.”From the video we watched, some games they might get outshot, but they’re a threat every time they touch the puck,” Blackwell said. “They beat us getting back to our defensive zone. You can’t turn pucks over on them.”Blackwell acknowledged the speed of the Crimson’s opponent Monday night.”They’re a fast team,” he said. “They like to trade chances. They’ll come back and counter. You’ve got to be cognizant where everyone is on the ice.”Blackwell has an awareness of his role as a Massachusetts hockey player in one of the better-known tournaments in Boston.Asked whether he thought about someday playing in the Beanpot while at The Prep, he said, “Towards the end, I was hoping I would one day.” Now, he said, “It’s my second time around.”The first two times, he and the Crimson have absorbed some tough first-round defeats. However, the sophomore who is finding his way sounded hopeful that he, and Harvard, would find their way in the Beanpot.”I’ve got two more cracks,” he noted.Rich Tenorio can be reached at [email protected].