Two years ago Ben Kaplan was your typical college hockey player. He was a freshman for Holy Cross, a 20-win team bound for a first-round bye and third-place finish in Atlantic Hockey.
Appearing in 10 games, he registered a goal in his fifth appearance, a home game at the Hart Center against Niagara.
Off the ice, Kaplan was a budding academic at the institution with your typical college social life. Entered into a competition along the lines of the TV show “Shark Tank,” in which entrepreneurs make business pitches, he looked at his own life and wondered how he could use his life experiences.