The run-up to ECAC Hockey’s final weekend largely felt formulaic compared to the parity of other leagues.
The thrilling drama associated with an unsure championship hunt didn’t exist, and the top tier of teams seeking byes long differentiated itself before the final points decided which players received a weekend away from competitive hockey. A race for home ice existed in the lower tier of the conference, but the bulk of teams spent weeks understanding they’d either have to survive the first round at home or upend someone with a road trip.
Last year threw most of that on its head. Quinnipiac still ran away with the Cleary Cup as the league’s regular season champion, but the swing spots associated with home ice and first round byes found themselves cluttered with races undecided into the season’s final week. After the league decided to shrink its first round to a single game, the North Country teams at St. Lawrence and Clarkson found themselves battling Colgate for a shot at a first-round bye while Union, Princeton and RPI competed for two home slots.
This year carried similar storylines, but an unprecedented chaos established by a season-long parity has ECAC primed for a final weekend for the ages. Nearly every spot aside from Quinnipiac’s top seed is still up for grabs, and while the Bobcats are being joined by Cornell and Colgate in the second weekend’s best-of-three series, the rest of the spots, including every single home seed, remains undecided.
It’s a precarious slope, but it’s one that will make this weekend one of the most exciting weekends in league history.
“It’s a big opportunity for us,” said Harvard coach Ted Donato. “Playing at home carries a distinct advantage, and in a one-game playoff, where it’s win-or-go-home, it’s a real important ingredient to success. We’ve probably had more ups and downs throughout the season, and we’ve battled through a number of challenges with our health, but we’re really looking forward to having a chance to find our game and hit the playoffs running.”
Playing from a position of power was something that propelled the Crimson to two straight second place finishes and a Whitelaw Cup in 2022 as the league’s postseason champions, but the team that qualified for six NCAA tournaments in the last seven possible years (which excludes the 2020 canceled national tournament and the 2020-2021 season that the Ivy League schools didn’t play) struggled out of the gates with one win in the entire first half of this season.
That lone win was over a top-ranked Cornell team during a weekend that included a come-from-behind tie against Colgate, but the losses piled up after that 1-1-3 start. The trip to the North Country was a complete shutout in a pair of defeats to Clarkson and St. Lawrence, and a return from semester break began with a 5-2 loss to Princeton and a 4-2 non-conference loss to Connecticut.
The season felt like everything was on the verge of derailing, but a 1-0 win at Yale helped Harvard find some stroke before a four-point weekend against RPI and Union. A 6-3 win over Colgate one week later helped generate even more momentum when the Crimson rallied from a two-goal deficit, and after pushing Northeastern to overtime in the Beanpot semifinal, it’s been impossible to find a weekend where the team’s been outright swept.
“It’s felt like all year, we’ve had one player come back into the lineup when one player went back out [with an injury],” Donato admitted, “so it’s been a challenge. I think any coach will tell you that having the full lineup and having pieces into it gives them the best chance of having success, so it’s been a challenge for us. Over the last little while, we’ve really focused on trying to find a team game that gives us the best chance at success, and I think this final weekend is an opportunity to work on that as well because we’ve gotten to a position where we can control our own destiny.”
Ah, yes. The destiny portion. Harvard’s ability to elevate its game and avoid losses is a big reason why a five-win team was able to push its way into eighth place as the final weekend dawns. Even last week, the shootout win over RPI gave the Crimson a second point on a weekend where they lost to Union, and in a world where a two-point swing would’ve created a three-way tie for the final home spot, it instead gave Harvard a one-point advantage while pushing the Engineers into an uphill battle for the No. 10 seed.
That miniscule difference doesn’t seem like much in the grand scheme of the whole season, but the Crimson can clinch home ice and the No. 8 seed as soon as Friday night if they pair a regulation win over Yale with a St. Lawrence regulation win over Princeton. They can also move, with the right results, to within shouting distance of the Saints for seventh place while attempting to chase down Union for sixth because SLU finishes the season against Quinnipiac while the Garnet Chargers have to deal with the Cornell-Colgate road trip.
And while Cornell clinched the Ivy League’s unofficial hockey championship by earning 21 points against Ancient Eight teams heading into this weekend, a sweep and six points would give the Crimson a chance to finish second behind the Big Red while vaulting over both Dartmouth and Princeton.
That’s not a bad deal at all for a team that’s played significantly better as it gelled in the second half of the season, and the system or style of play is starting to develop into something that’s capable of a late-season or postseason run. Sophomore netminder Aku Koskenvuo stopped 35 shots in that official tie against RPI, and when facing Quinnipiac earlier this year, he made 37 saves while only surrendering two goals, a number that’s been replicated in each of his last three outings.
Senior Derek Mullahy, meanwhile, allowed one goal against St. Lawrence before goal numbers jumped a bit against Clarkson and Union.
The skaters, in turn, have improved despite only having 10 players with a full 27 games to their name. Joe Miller’s 22 points lead the team atop the chart as the only 10-goal scorer, but sophomore defenseman Ryan Healey emerged through a six-goal stretch in January to jump to the top of the team sheet. Sophomore forward Casey Severo and junior Alex Gaffney likewise sprinkled seven goals apiece, and 10 different players have more than one goal this year on an offense that averaged close to 2.5 goals per game since that Colgate game in January – a number that jumps a full quarter-goal by excluding the Beanpot consolation game against Boston College.
“We were never negative when the results weren’t there,” Donato said. “The [team] has continued to battle for each other and tried to continually develop. We have a lot of young guys that are in situations and are playing in scenarios that are new to them. They all haven’t ended the way we wanted them to, but [the players] remained resilient. That’s been a key. We’ve gotten solid goaltending, which I think is the bedrock of trying to have success at the end of the season and the playoffs.
“There’s a lot of excitement from our guys that we can elevate our game and try to have some success here at the end.”
