Regular Season Finale Vital to ECAC Race

By the end of tomorrow night, the Harvard men’s hockey team will know its ECAC postseason fate.

With just two games left to play for every squad, the league postseason picture is still foggy at best, and the Crimson could end up anywhere from the top of the pack to eighth in the 12-team standings.

But one thing is certain: if Harvard sweeps this weekend’s home contests against St. Lawrence and Clarkson, it will finish fourth at worst.

That would clinch one of the four first-round byes for the league playoffs, which begin March 4.

“There’s no question they’re the two biggest games of the year,” said junior defenseman Dylan Reese. “We know how important it is, and the fact that if we win and we sweep, then we get the bye.

“And the bye is crucial,” he added, “especially coming off a weekend like this.”

Reese was referring to a split in New York: a 4-1 loss to Colgate and then a 4-3 thriller over Cornell in front of a packed and raucous Lynah Rink crowd.

The win clinched the Crimson’s first Ivy title since 2000, but it came at a price: defenseman Brian McCafferty, forward Tyler Magura, and captain Peter Hafner were all helped off the ice with various injuries.

Though Hafner’s stitches to the forehead won’t hinder him this weekend, coach Ted Donato ’91 could not comment on the rest of his locker room-turned-infirmary, which includes not only McCafferty and Magura but sophomore forward Mike Taylor, who went down with a leg injury three weeks ago at Brown.

“I’m not sure that we’re going to get anybody back,” Donato said, “but we hope that we get one or two, between the guys that were left behind and the guys that were injured over the weekend.”

The Crimson will need it against St. Lawrence tonight. The Saints, 3-0-1 in their last four, are currently two points ahead of Harvard in the running for that fourth bye.

And should the Crimson beat St. Lawrence (18-12-2, 12-7-1), there still exists the risk of a letdown tomorrow night against Clarkson (16-13-3, 9-9-2). Of the four byes, only one has been clinched—by Cornell—and as five teams are still jockeying for the others, Harvard must sweep this weekend to be assured anything.

“We’ve built up a pretty good record at home over the last couple years,” Donato said, “and it’s important.”

The Bright Hockey Center is no Lynah Rink—or, rather, the Harvard hockey following is no Big Red Faithful—but the Crimson has still gone 21-3-1 in the last two seasons at home. Two more wins would give the Harvard a week off, time for the new Ivy champs to rest up for the playoffs.

“Last weekend was very good,” Donato said. “The guys deserve a lot of credit for winning the Ivy League, but one way of looking at last weekend [is that] it just allowed us to have a chance to do what we need to do this weekend.”

—Staff writer Rebecca A. Seesel can be reached at seesel@fas.harvard.edu.