Veteranscribe's Blog

Speech by Tom Burke, Assistant Secretary of the Beanpot College Hockey Tournament, at the press luncheon at TD Garden, January 28, 2014.

Today I have the honor of introducing the Beanpot Hall of Fame Class of 2014. We have just one inductee. Lane MacDonald, Harvard University, Class of 1989. And where to begin?

Well, knowing a bit about Lane, I think he’d rather I speak of teams, and lines, and other people. So I’ll start there. A couple of years ago the Massachusetts Hockey Hall of Fame enshrined an entire Harvard line that we all know as the Local Line. Three Massachusetts kids named Corkery, McManama, and Hynes who terrorized opponents for three seasons in the early seventies. It was possibly Harvard’s best line ever.

When I raised that subject with Lane, and asked him about his own line, he said that that Harvard’s best lines were whichever ones had Joe Cavanaugh or Bill Cleary. But if you know your Harvard hockey history, or if you just remember the fabulous season of 1988-89, you might just cast your vote for the line of Lane MacDonald, Alain Bourbeau, and C.J. Young.

Lane was the team captain that year. Harvard had a record of 31-3. They won the Beanpot. They won the NCAA championship. Lane was the MVP in that Beanpot. He’s tied for third place in all time Beanpot scoring – 15 points, same as Art Chisholm of Northeastern, Vic Stanfield of BU, and Billy Daley of BC.

Many of you here remember Lane’s father Lowell. He had an 18-year professional career that began back in the days of the six-team National Hockey League. Lowell for the Red Wings, the Kings, and the Penguins. One of his teammates on the Pittsburgh Penguins was Bobby McManama, one of those guys on the Local Line that I mentioned a minute ago. Bobby came to the MacDonalds’ for dinner one night, and that meeting got Lane thinking about going to Harvard.

That’s where he ended up, and what a career it was. He’s Harvard’s top goal scorer of all time with 111. He had 12 shorthanded goals – the next player on the all-time list has 7. The only man who scored more goals than Lane in a single Harvard season is with us today – his coach Bill Cleary.

I’ve mentioned that Lane was captain of the NCAA champions of 1989. The MVP of that championship tournament is here too – coach Ted Donato.

Lane also played for the 1988 U.S. Olympic team in Calgary before he returned to Harvard for his final season. After Harvard, a pro career didn’t happen. Lane played in Switzerland and helped coach at Harvard for a year. But his playing career was cut short due to recurring problems from head injuries he’d suffered along the way.

Lane then entered the investment banking field, earned his MBA at Stanford, and now he’s a managing director at Harvard Management Company. Those are the financial guys who take care of the school’s endowment. So Lane is still scoring goals for Harvard.

Over the course of his career, the honors and accolades to Lane MacDonald the hockey player included:

ECAC Player of the Year
Twice a First Team All-America
The Walter Brown Award
The Hobey Baker Award
And membership in the United States Hockey Hall of Fame.

But now, as we of Beanpot Land all would agree, he is in truly distinguished company. He’s the newest member of the Beanpot Hall of Fame. Lane MacDonald.

This entry was posted on January 29, 2014 at 12:10 pm and is filed under Things in General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.