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Mar. 26—FALMOUTH — The stack of programs from all those Frozen Fours on Harry Duvall's kitchen table is really a stack of memories.
From 1999 in Anaheim to 2016 in Tampa, if the 88-year-old thinks a minute, he can tell you a story from each of them. Harry and his wife, Jeanette, went to 18 Frozen Fours in a row. They drove to most of them, crisscrossing the country to honor their passion for college hockey.
Hockey was a big part of the life they built together.
While working as a civilian engineer for the Coast Guard, Harry coached every level of youth hockey in their hometown of Needham, Massachusetts, for 40 years. He played two seasons of college hockey at Clarkson before head coach Len Ceglarski made it clear his ice time would be limited and offered Harry the role of equipment manager and the promise he'd be able to continue skating with the team.
Harry coached his children, including his son, also Harry, who played at Colgate.
Jeanette served as president of the Frank Bell Needham Youth Hockey league for more than 20 years, and was inducted into the Massachusetts Hockey Hall of Fame in 2011.
Other hockey memorabilia sits piled on a desk in his home office, but that Hall of Fame placard, outlining the ways Jeanette improved hockey in her hometown and the state, hangs in a place of honor.
Jeanette died in December. She was 86.
When it soon came time to get Harry a Christmas gift, his granddaughters Kayla and Amber Rose knew they wanted to get him something that would pay tribute to his love of hockey and their grandmother. They settled on tickets to the Hockey East championship game at TD Garden.
"He's the one who taught us to skate," said Kayla, who, like her sister, played hockey at North Yarmouth Academy. "He's the person who kept the love of hockey in our family."
Sitting a few rows from the ice on Friday night, behind the goal on which Maine shot in the first and third periods, Harry, Kayla, and Amber had an absolute blast.
"That is one of my favorite memories with him, seeing the joy on his face," Amber said.
Don't take my word for it. You can see it for yourself.
Kayla posted a video of Harry enjoying the game to her Instagram feed (@kaylarose1220). There he is, cheering on the Black Bears, chatting with and high-fiving strangers, imploring Maine to shoot, and dancing a perfect victory jig.
NESN shared a link to Kayla's video to its Facebook page. So did Hockey East. Harry went viral. He laughs when told this. It's the only way he knows to respond to such a thing.
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A post shared by KAYLA ROSE (@kaylarose1220)
Harry figures hockey is in his blood.
Five of his uncles played the game in their native New Brunswick, including Allison "Pickles" MacNichol, who played on the Royal Canadian Air Force Flyers team during World War II with Milt Schmidt, Woody Dumart, and Bobby Bauer, stars with the Boston Bruins at the time.
Harry became a fan of the Black Bears for a few reasons. First, his family ties to Maine are tight. His brother Howie lives in Robinson, near Calais on the New Brunswick border, and the family has a home on Vinalhaven. Second, he loved Shawn Walsh, the coach who built Maine into a college hockey powerhouse in the 1980s.
"Being a coach myself, I liked his style of coaching. He was tough," Harry said.
Harry sees a lot of Walsh in Ben Barr, Maine's current coach. Barr recruited players who won national titles at Union, Providence and UMass, guys who play gritty hockey and outwork teams full of high NHL draft picks.
That's what Harry, who hasn't missed a Maine game in two years thanks to ESPN+, sees in the current Black Bears.
"I've watched them very closely, and every single one of them gives it their best, and they do it the entire game," he said. "They play two overtimes Thursday against Northeastern, and the next day, to put on that display against UConn. ... I love their work ethic. I always taught that when I coached."
With their shared roots on the New Brunswick coast, Maine captain Lynden Breen is Harry's favorite player. He has cousins who live in Breen's hometown, Grand Bay-Westfield. So it was fitting Breen scored Maine's first goal.
Harry's daughter Suzanne lives in the St. Louis area, the site of the upcoming Frozen Four. If Maine advances out of its regional in Allentown, Pennsylvania (the Black Bears take on Penn State Friday night at 8:30), there's talk in the family of getting him to another Frozen Four.
That would be the perfect cap to this season, following a team that has given Harry so much joy at the exact moment he needed it.
"Hockey has been good to me," he said. "The fans (last Friday) were awesome. We were high-fiving each other. It was like a dream. The game was perfect. The company, my granddaughters, was perfect. The fans were perfect."
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From 1999 in Anaheim to 2016 in Tampa, if the 88-year-old thinks a minute, he can tell you a story from each of them. Harry and his wife, Jeanette, went to 18 Frozen Fours in a row. They drove to most of them, crisscrossing the country to honor their passion for college hockey.
Hockey was a big part of the life they built together.
While working as a civilian engineer for the Coast Guard, Harry coached every level of youth hockey in their hometown of Needham, Massachusetts, for 40 years. He played two seasons of college hockey at Clarkson before head coach Len Ceglarski made it clear his ice time would be limited and offered Harry the role of equipment manager and the promise he'd be able to continue skating with the team.
Harry coached his children, including his son, also Harry, who played at Colgate.
Jeanette served as president of the Frank Bell Needham Youth Hockey league for more than 20 years, and was inducted into the Massachusetts Hockey Hall of Fame in 2011.
Other hockey memorabilia sits piled on a desk in his home office, but that Hall of Fame placard, outlining the ways Jeanette improved hockey in her hometown and the state, hangs in a place of honor.
Jeanette died in December. She was 86.
When it soon came time to get Harry a Christmas gift, his granddaughters Kayla and Amber Rose knew they wanted to get him something that would pay tribute to his love of hockey and their grandmother. They settled on tickets to the Hockey East championship game at TD Garden.
"He's the one who taught us to skate," said Kayla, who, like her sister, played hockey at North Yarmouth Academy. "He's the person who kept the love of hockey in our family."
Sitting a few rows from the ice on Friday night, behind the goal on which Maine shot in the first and third periods, Harry, Kayla, and Amber had an absolute blast.
"That is one of my favorite memories with him, seeing the joy on his face," Amber said.
Don't take my word for it. You can see it for yourself.
Kayla posted a video of Harry enjoying the game to her Instagram feed (@kaylarose1220). There he is, cheering on the Black Bears, chatting with and high-fiving strangers, imploring Maine to shoot, and dancing a perfect victory jig.
NESN shared a link to Kayla's video to its Facebook page. So did Hockey East. Harry went viral. He laughs when told this. It's the only way he knows to respond to such a thing.
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by KAYLA ROSE (@kaylarose1220)
Harry figures hockey is in his blood.
Five of his uncles played the game in their native New Brunswick, including Allison "Pickles" MacNichol, who played on the Royal Canadian Air Force Flyers team during World War II with Milt Schmidt, Woody Dumart, and Bobby Bauer, stars with the Boston Bruins at the time.
Harry became a fan of the Black Bears for a few reasons. First, his family ties to Maine are tight. His brother Howie lives in Robinson, near Calais on the New Brunswick border, and the family has a home on Vinalhaven. Second, he loved Shawn Walsh, the coach who built Maine into a college hockey powerhouse in the 1980s.
"Being a coach myself, I liked his style of coaching. He was tough," Harry said.
Harry sees a lot of Walsh in Ben Barr, Maine's current coach. Barr recruited players who won national titles at Union, Providence and UMass, guys who play gritty hockey and outwork teams full of high NHL draft picks.
That's what Harry, who hasn't missed a Maine game in two years thanks to ESPN+, sees in the current Black Bears.
"I've watched them very closely, and every single one of them gives it their best, and they do it the entire game," he said. "They play two overtimes Thursday against Northeastern, and the next day, to put on that display against UConn. ... I love their work ethic. I always taught that when I coached."
With their shared roots on the New Brunswick coast, Maine captain Lynden Breen is Harry's favorite player. He has cousins who live in Breen's hometown, Grand Bay-Westfield. So it was fitting Breen scored Maine's first goal.
Harry's daughter Suzanne lives in the St. Louis area, the site of the upcoming Frozen Four. If Maine advances out of its regional in Allentown, Pennsylvania (the Black Bears take on Penn State Friday night at 8:30), there's talk in the family of getting him to another Frozen Four.
That would be the perfect cap to this season, following a team that has given Harry so much joy at the exact moment he needed it.
"Hockey has been good to me," he said. "The fans (last Friday) were awesome. We were high-fiving each other. It was like a dream. The game was perfect. The company, my granddaughters, was perfect. The fans were perfect."
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