M. Hockey Meets Cornell in Lake Placid

For six years, the Harvard men's hockey team has been mired in mediocrity. This weekend, the Crimson has its best chance to finally break out.

Harvard can advance to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1994 with a pair of victories in this weekend's ECAC Championship in Lake Placid, beginning with this afternoon's 4 p.m. contest against Cornell.

A Crimson victory today would put Harvard in tomorrow night's championship game against either St. Lawrence, Dartmouth, or Vermont, with the winner gaining an automatic berth in the 12-team NCAA tournament. Harvard would play in the tournament consolation game earlier tomorrow with a loss. All games will be televised on NESN.

Despite being the second seed in the tournament, most observers do not expect the Crimson to leave victorious, pointing to its lackluster 2-5-1 record against the other four teams remaining.

Still, Harvard enters this game peaking, having gone 5-1-1 over its last seven games.

"We're playing our best hockey of the season," said Coach Mark Mazzoleni. "We've started to really develop some continuity over the last three or four weeks."

Cornell, on the other hand, struggled late in the season, losing five of its last eight regular season games before winning two close games against Princeton last weekend.

But the Big Red has always upped its play in the postseason. Cornell has won a league-high nine ECAC titles, despite only five regular season titles, and none since 1972.

"This is routine for them, and sometimes that gives a certain team an advantage," Mazzoleni said. "A team that hasn't been there gets caught up in all the hoopla and all the extracurricular things."

This will not be the Crimson's first huge game against Cornell. The Big Red defeated Harvard, 2-1, in a battle first place in the ECAC at Bright last month. That loss sent Harvard into a tailspin, as it would go on to lose four more games in a row.

"We didn't have one of our better nights that night," said Harvard captain Steve Moore. "We've gotten a lot better as a team since then."

The Big Red features a stifling, physical defense that allows only two goals a game in conference play. All-Ivy selection Doug Murray leads the blueliners, with five goals and ten assists on the year.

Cornell's last line of defense is no less stingy. All-Ivy Goaltender Matt Underhill has stopped over 92% of shots this season, allowing a paltry 1.80 goals a game.

After a twelve-goal bonanza in last weekend's sweep of Yale, the Crimson figures to have a tough time scoring in today's game. To beat the Big Red, Harvard will have to create traffic in front of the net and hope to convert on some rebounds.

"We're going to need to get some pucks to the net and get people away from the puck onto the net," Moore said. "We didn't do that as much as we planned in the last two games against them."

Harvard will look to several skaters to crack the Cornell defense. Sophomore Dominic Moore leads the balanced attack with 14 goals and 27 assists this season.

The Crimson's offense has been bolstered by the resurgence of Steve Moore, who bounced back from a disappointing senior season with five points in last weekend's seep of Yale, while playing stifling defense on star Bulldog center Jeff Hamilton.

One of the few Harvard players who's played in Lake Placid, Steve Moore should also provide the Crimson with much-needed senior leadership.

"You're not going to win the tournament with freshmen and sophomores," Mazzoleni said. "Your older kids have to step their game up, and Steve Moore played his best two games of his career last weekend."

Although Cornell has shut down the Crimson this season, allowing only three goals in two games, Harvard may find an advantage in Lake Placid's Olympic-size rink.

The larger ice sheet figures to help Harvard outmaneuver the Red defense, which is not known for its swiftness. The Crimson, on the other hand, prides itself on its speed and skating ability.

"That added 15 feet is a lot of room, and we're going to try to do a lot of things to take advantage of it," Mazzoleni said.

Although a bigger surface figures to be an advantage on paper, the Crimson has not faired well in larger rinks this year. Harvard lost all four games on Olympic-size ice, although three of those losses were to ranked teams.

Cornell also had little problem slowing the Harvard attack at the Bright, which features a slightly-larger-than-normal surface.

As tough as it is to score on Cornell, the Big Red has as much trouble scoring on its opponents. The team ranks ahead only of lowly Brown in scoring offense, scoring only two goals a game.

Cornell's ability to score is dependent on its power play, as almost half of the Big Red's goals this season have come with the man advantage. Harvard, however, has shown a tendency to take unnecessary penalties in recent games, especially in last weekend's series against Yale.

"Against Cornell, if you don't take penalties, then they don't get the power play and then they have a real difficult time scoring goals," Mazzoleni said. "That is gonna be a real key for us."

After being blistered with 68 shots in two games against Yale, Harvard senior goaltender Oli Jonas figures to see less action against Cornell. Jonas has been the undisputed team MVP this season, saving the Crimson from potential disaster created by its sometimes-suspect defense.

"If we didn't have Oliver Jonas in goal, we would've been in the lower half of the teams who made the playoffs," Mazzoleni said. "As Oliver goes, our team goes."

Jonas was recognized for his superb season yesterday when he received the Ken Dryden Award, given to the ECAC goaltender of the year.

"It's a great honor," said the soft-spoken Jonas at the awards banquet held in Lake Placid, N.Y. "I want to thank everyone, the coaching staff, my

teammates, and especially the senior class."

Also recognized were Dom Moore, voted onto the second team, and freshman Tim Pettit, who received all-rookie honors.

If the Crimson defeats Cornell, it figures to have an equally tough time in the championship game. Harvard's most-likely foe would be streaking St. Lawrence, led by ECAC Player of the Year Erik Anderson, who had a hat trick and three assists in his only appearance against Harvard this season.

The Crimson beat St. Lawrence 4-1 last month, but Anderson was out with an injury. The Saints are 15-2-2 since later December with Anderson in the lineup.

Dartmouth and Vermont must win two games to get to the championship, but both teams match up favorably with the Crimson. The Catamounts, fresh off a stunning three-game victory over ECAC regular season champion Clarkson, seem to have solved their goaltending problems and swept the Crimson this year.

Dartmouth split its series with Harvard, but the Big Green has been playing as well as anyone in the league lately, and beat the Crimson 7-0 last month, Harvard's worst loss in over twenty years.

Still, no team enters the tournament as the clear favorite. At its best, Harvard can handle any of the teams remaining and finally return to hockey's version of the big dance.