Any good coach will tell you that it’s dangerous to dwell on past games, good or bad.
Good teams do what they need to do, learn from their mistakes, and move on.
But seniors on three Ivy League teams can be forgiven if they hang on to the memory of last weekend’s games as ECAC Hockey heads into the final weekend of the regular season.
Harvard, Brown, and Yale all held their senior nights on Saturday. Normally a special night as it is, it must have been even special for the seniors involved given that many of the last two classes of seniors had part of all of their seasons taken away by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Even better, all three teams won on Saturday, with all three getting important contributions from their seniors. The Crimson’s Casey Dornbach scored the lone goal in Harvard’s 1-0 win over Quinnipiac, while Bears’ seniors Tristan Crozier and Michael Maloney scored in a shootout win over Union. Finally, the Bulldogs’ Kyle Johnson had a goal and classmate Justin Pierson had two assists in a win over Rensselaer.
“I loved how the guys really rallied around the seniors,” Johnson said following the game. “Everyone was on board to bring their best and the results showed it.”
All three teams will look to take that momentum into the final weekend of the regular season. Harvard has already clinched a first-round, while Yale will start the playoffs on the road. As it stands, Brown would host a playoff series, although the Bears are one of several teams bunched together in the crowded middle of the league standings.
Here’s how things look heading into the final weekend of regular season play:
Every season, it seems like there’s a surprise team in ECAC Hockey that turns it on in the second half and finishes with a first-round bye in the conference tournament. However, that doesn’t appear to be the case this season, as Quinnipiac, Clarkson, and Harvard have already clinched a first-round bye after being picked to finish in the top four in the league’s preseason poll.
Cornell, the final team picked to finish in the top four, has a three-point lead on fifth place Colgate for the last bye in the conference tournament. The Big Red would lose all potential tiebreaking scenarios with the Raiders and sixth-place RPI. The league’s regular-season title is still up for grabs, as the first-place Bobcats have a four-point lead over the Golden Knights following Tuesday’s win against Yale.
Going further back, Quinnipiac, Clarkson, and Cornell finished in the top four in the 2019-20 season, which is the last time ECAC Hockey finished a full regular-season schedule. Harvard tied with RPI for fourth place but lost out based on a tiebreaker.
The Engineers are one of four teams that are in position to host a playoff series entering the final weekend of the regular season. Fifth-place Colgate is the only of those teams to have clinched home ice, but RPI would do so with at least two points this weekend. It’s a little more precarious for Princeton and Brown, who are tied with 23 points each, only one point ahead of both Union and St. Lawrence for the final two home ice spots.
Dartmouth and Yale are in 11th and 12th, respectively. Both still have a chance of hosting a playoff series but would need some help from other teams this weekend.
