College Hockey:

This Week In The ECAC: Jan. 31, 2002

“‘It’s a big thing for them,’ said Harvard head coach Mark Mazzoleni when asked about the rivalry. ‘Harvard has its own backyard rivalries here with Boston College, Boston University and Northeastern. Those are the traditional rivals along with Harvard and Yale, which has been a tremendous rivalry over the years. I don’t know what Cornell’s focus is when they play, but it seems like it’s us which is fine.’”

To say that this game means nothing to Harvard would be false. Who could forget the night when former Harvard goalie Tripp Tracy demonstrated his agility with a hockey stick to the enraged Cornell faithful, or when a Harvard Crimson writer dared to insult the Big Red following.

Hours after that Crimson article hit newsstands, a chain email was forwarded around to all former and present Cornell students, and then the Cornell student paper re-printed the article in its entirety for those who may have missed the email. Things got so intense that the poor Crimson writer was flocked with extra security that night at Lynah and had to endure taunting by the crowd. All of this over a college hockey game?

“They are a well-coached team and they have a very loud, festive environment,” said Mazzoleni. “A rivalry is made when you have good teams and not when two teams are cellar dwellers. Our program is coming along and theirs is right up there so that’s what makes this a good rivalry.”

“They have a great team and that’s what made this rivalry so great, is that we both traditionally have great hockey teams,” said Cornell head coach Mike Schafer.

So while the Cornell students spend their final few hours before the game scrounging for denizen of the deep, the players and coaches will be focusing on the game at hand. The two teams faced off earlier this year at Bright Hockey Center and Harvard walked away with a crushing 4-3 overtime victory.

“We want the same thing to happen as last year as we went down and played for first place and we beat them,” said Schafer. “We owe them a little bit, and we had a little locker room and bulletin board material after the first game this year. We have a press clipping that says ‘Harvard Dominates Cornell,’ so we posted it in our locker room and our guys take a little offense to that and look forward to the weekend.”

Cornell is in a perfect position to take the second game, since Harvard is coming off an exam break. The team defeated the U-18 team last Saturday night, but that contest in no way can prepare them for what is to come at Lynah. With Cornell’s defense playing its best hockey of the season — it held Clarkson and St. Lawrence to one goal last weekend — this will be a mighty test for the Crimson.

The Harvard coaching staff believes they have a balanced attack that can do some damage, but it will come down to the team’s ability to penetrate deep into the offensive zone. You aren’t going to beat the defense with one-on-one moves, so Mazzoleni has preached the need for his team to fire shots on net and see what happens.

“I like our lines right now. We have three balanced lines to the point where you look at the lines and wonder what is the first line,” said Mazzoleni. “I think that we have three first lines … We like the lines that we have and we don’t have to worry as much about a bad matchup. We beat them already this year and we know the type of environment we are going into and the type of team we will be facing. We need to do the things well.”

Mazzoleni said that senior captain Peter Capouch addressed the team on Monday to make sure the younger players knew what they would face (namely flying fish) when they stepped into Lynah Rink. Despite the hostile environment, Harvard has fared quite well in Ithaca during the regular season. The team is undefeated at Lynah in its last three regular-season games and holds an 11-3-4 record there since the 1984-85 season.

“It will be a great game and I hope we can knock a lot of the rust out of them in the first period,” said Schafer. “The first period will be critical in the sense that we get off to a great start. They’re going to be healthy and they’ll have some jump and they’ll be flying around. We have to come out and play very well at home and they’ll try to take the crowd out of it to begin with and play for that 0-0 tie in the first period.”

No matter how you look at this game — whether you wear a Harvard or Cornell jersey — this game means everything. It goes beyond rivalries because when those players take to the ice, they will be battling for first place. And in a league where every point counts, there is truly no bigger game than the one that will be played on Friday night in Ithaca, N.Y.

The Undercard

There certainly are plenty of great matchups this weekend in the ECAC. Aside from Cornell and Harvard, you have to look at the other two teams in this travel partner set — Brown and Colgate.

One has been knocking off ranked teams and surprising many, after all, it was almost unanimous that the Bears would finish last in the standings this season, and Colgate, who did not look like any semblance of a team earlier on in the season. Don’t look now, but the Raiders are in seventh place after a three point weekend in the North Country.

The Bears have gone 4-1-0 in their last five games and hope to turn the success of wins over UConn, St. Cloud and UMass-Lowell into league wins. It’s also no coincidence that the Bears have gone up whilst seeing Yann Danis take over the starting goaltending job.

“Part of our resurgence has been that Yann Denis has played extremely well for us,” said head coach Roger Grillo.

If the Bears can use their non-conference prowess and apply it within the league, the ECAC may be watching out.

Then there is Colgate, which at one point was down and out. Frustrated, kick