Division I hockey players are big. Most of them are in the 6-foot, 200 pounds-plus range and can deliver a hit that sends the boards shaking. Imagine not being one of the big guys. What if you stood 5-feet-8-inches and head into the face-off circle against a guy that is 6-feet-1-inch or bigger? It’s not a situation many of us have any interest in going into, but Northeastern has a couple of guys that don’t mind, two of whom I’ve dubbed the Mid-Atlantic Mad Men. OK, it’s a hokey name, but junior forward Greg Costa, a Maryland native, and junior forward Chris Donovan, a Virginia native, both are guys that are willing to put their bodies on the line, and play bigger than they actually are. They are guys who play like they are 6-feet-2-inches, when they are really 5-feet-8-inches.

So what drives a smaller guy to go plowing into the boards against a guy that has a few inches and close to 25 pounds on him?

For Chris Donovan, it’s nothing new.

“My whole life I’ve been a small guy, nothing’s really changed,” he said. “You just get used to playing like it. You’re just used to seeing guys that are bigger than you. You’re always used to looking up. [In] college obviously the guys get a lot bigger and you just try and work on getting wider since you can’t control getting taller.”

Costa echoed similar sentiments.

“As a smaller guy, you get to use your quickness. It’s an advantage, and your lower center of gravity. I don’t think a big guy is expecting a big hit out of you,” he said.

Donovan also said he felt being smaller gave him a sort of fearlessness on the ice.

“The good thing about being small is you got nothing to lose when you’re going in to hit people. People expect you not to be making big hits. It feels good obviously when you knock someone on their backside. You just go in there as the underdog, so it’s a win-win situation.”

It’s not easy being one of the smaller guys on the ice. You become so much more susceptible to being taken out of the play and it makes it harder to be an effective player. But the Mid-Atlantic Mad Men of the Northeastern hockey team are a set of guys that hail from near our nation’s capital. It’s not exactly a hockey hot bed, yet they have found a role for themselves here at Northeastern and have turned themselves into a pair of fan favorites with their tough, physical style of play.

For Costa, coaches were key.

“Growing up we had real good coaches, I was able to develop my game at DeMatha Catholic High School in Hyattsville, Md.