No Beanpot Respite for M. Hockey

The Harvard men's ice hockey team can capture its first Beanpot title since 1993 with a win over Boston University Monday night. The honor and prestige of the tournament would easily make it Harvard's most significant victory in that timespan and bring back some old time glory to the program.

Right now, that does not matter one bit.

Inserted between the two rounds of the Beanpot are two tough divisional games against Union on Friday night and Rensselaer Saturday afternoon. It is almost more imperative for the Crimson to prevail against these two squads than over the Terriers, as Harvard desperately needs every point in a tight ECAC race.

"These are two big ECAC games that we need in order to start our second half," said senior forward Henry Higdon.

Though the Beanpot tournament is a prestigious event, it has no direct effect on Harvard's place in the standings. The game against Union marks the beginning of the critical stretch drive which finds Harvard tied for fourth place along with Cornell and RPI, Saturday's opponent.

With the enormous amount of parity in the ECAC this year, the Crimson has little room for error. A mere four points separate Harvard from second place, but it leads the eighth place teams by the same margin.

"The Beanpot is secondary right now," said sophomore forward Trevor Allman. "The next games are league games which mean more, and they have our focus."

Still, the prospect of a letdown after a big victory cannot be discounted.

The Skating Dutchmen (4-15-3 over-all, 2-8-2 ECAC) enter this contest in the basement of the ECAC, one of the only teams left out of the division's parity. Union has a mere six points in twelve conference games.

Union just recently snapped an eight game winless streak with a modest 6-3 win over Army.

The Skating Dutchmen boast no significant scoring threat, with forward Brent Ozarowski's six game point scoring streak (2 goals, 7 assists) making him the only offensive figure of note.

Rather, Union likes to play a physical style and try to wear teams down with punishing checks. They take a workman's attitude into each game and try to scrap together wins.

"Union is a hardworking, physical team," Allman said. "We will have to be prepared to respond in kind and then exploit that."

The Union game will also feature the return of sophomore goaltender J.R. Prestifilippo. He has been out for over a month with mononucleosis. His illness forced freshman backup Oliver Jonas to start at the Beanpot.

"I am really excited to get back into a game," Prestifilippo said. "I hope to keep things basic and technically sound, and I will do alright."

Junior forward Craig Adams, Harvard's only remaining significant injury, is still classified as day-to-day and probably will miss the weekend's games.

The Skating Dutchmen have had some success against the Crimson this year. In Harvard's last game before its much-ballyhooed layoff, the Crimson had to scramble to force the game into overtime before it pulled out the win with a goal by junior Rob Millar.

The close game can probably be blamed more on Harvard's lack of intensity and poor play throughout most of the game.

"We let Union play with us the last time and we sunk to their level," said freshman defenseman Graham Morrell. "If we just come out and play our game, we can really stick it to them."

Playing with intensity for a full 60 minutes will be the key for Harvard. It still has yet to produce such an effort. Even in the magnificent Beanpot win, a decided lack of intensity in the first period and opening of the second allowed BC to build its 3-0 lead and necessitated a heroic comeback.

The Crimson got away with it against BC and may even get away with it again against Union, but it will not survive against RPI and No. 3 Boston University with such performances.

Harvard will face a very different team in RPI (11-8-3 overall, 5-4-3 ECAC) on Saturday. RPI has achieved its fourth place position through primarily an offense-oriented system.

The Engineers boast four of the top seven scorers in the conference. The Crimson defense will have to stop Eric Healy, Matthew Garver--the top two point getters in the ECAC--Mark Murphy and Alain St. Hilaire. All four players average almost two points per game.

However, with Hobey Baker candidate Chris Drury coming up Monday and having already stopped another favorite, Marty Reasoner, last Monday, these four Engineers do not worry the Crimson at all.

"We are confident with our goaltending and our defense," Allman said. "We are not worried about their big guns, we just have to play our game."

Jonas will start Saturday afternoon to maximize Head Coach Ronn Tommasoni's options in the Beanpot. Jonas came through in a very tight spot with stellar play last Monday against the Eagles.

However, RPI took advantage of its superior offensive skills in the last meeting, defeating the Crimson 6-4.

"We know as a team that their offense is really good," said Jonas. "We will just have to play more together to stop them."

The Crimson also will have an opportunity to score themselves, since RPI has given up the third most goals in the conference during league games.

"We just have to go out and play 60 minutes of hockey with the same intensity," Higdon said. "The rest will take care of itself."

Harvard knows this can be the critical weekend of the season. A weekend sweep, something it has yet to accomplish this year, would carry the Crimson into the championship game against BU with some momentum.

"This is it. We have three games in four days," Morrell said. "We just want to keep the roll going and have momentum into Monday night and beyond."

However, before any momentum develops, before Harvard can move up in the conference, or dream of any Beanpot trophy, it first has to win Friday night against Union.

Right now, it is the most significant game of the year.