The Rush Hour Semifinal

Friday night, 5 p.m., and the ticket seller at North Station is swamped.

One commuter rail ticket to Zone 2 and Reading. One ticket to Zone 5 and Andover. One to Zone 1 and Melrose Highlands. One to Section 14 and the St. Lawrence-Cornell hockey game.

Wrong window, buddy.

While the rush hour crowd jockeys for seats on the commuter trains out of North Station tonight, the Saints and the Big Red will be jockeying next door in Boston Garden for a spot in the ECAC finals.

The winner of the semifinal contest hits prime time: the ECAC Tournament championship tomorrow night at 8:30 p.m., complete with Sports-Channel. The loser gets to see what North Station--and the Garden--looks like without a crowd.

"[Cornell] is a solid team and well-coached," said SLU Coach Joe Marsh, who was named ECAC Coach of the Year yesterday. "Hopefully, we can capitalize on our experience, especially from last year."

Second-seeded St. Lawrence (27-2) is the defending champion in the tourney and used the automatic NCAA bid it earned with last year's crown to advance all the way to the national finals. Number-five Cornell (16-11-1) is looking to return to the prominence that earned it a league-high seven tournament championships.

In the other semifinal game, top-seeded Harvard (26-2) meets Vermont (19-12-1) at 8 p.m.

"I think with the four teams here, we'll be playing college hockey as it should be played," Cornell Coach Brian McCutcheon said. "A skating game, aggressive, but under control."

The small Boston Garden ice surface seems better suited to a physical, rather than finesse, style of play. But with four teams known for skating and scoring, the cramped Garden rink shouldn't slant in anyone's favor.

But SLU has received the blessings of the oddsmakers, and the Saints captured both regular-season meetings against the Red.

"We had problems scoring goals against them [during the regular season]," McCutcheon said. "We don't have the prolific goal-scorers like, say, a Harvard has. We just have to keep the goals to a minimum and hopefully get our two, three or four goals a game."

Senior Rob Levasseur (26 goals, 10 assists, 36 points) and sophomore Trent Andison (17-16--33) are Cornell's only scorers to top the 20-point mark. Andison (knee injury) will not be in the line-up this weekend.

McCutcheon has a young team--he skates eight freshmen and five sophomores. Marsh, however, relies on a line-up that boasts seven seniors and the experience of playing in the NCAAs.

"[The Saints] have great goaltending, good team defense and excellent depth," McCutcheon said.

Marsh's main weapon, senior center Jamie Baker, has been out since December with a leg injury. But sophomore wing Andy Pritchard (26-21--47) and senior goaltender Paul Cohen (2.66 goals-against average, .913 save percentage) have carried a team that's strong at both ends of the ice.

Last weekend, the two teams played 15 miles away from each other in North Country--Cornell at Clarkson's Walker Arena in Potsdam, N.Y., and St. Lawrence at home in Canton. The Big Red knocked off the Golden Knights in the series opener and held on for a 0-0 tie in game two, while the Saints swept Yale.