Men's Hockey to Battle RPI-New Hampshire Winner

The beards are here, and boy, are they ugly!

But for the Harvard hockey team's sake, it would be a perfect work of art if that facial hair kept on growing for another nine days, because the NCAA college hockey tournament begins today and lasts through a week from tomorrow. The Crimson (23-4-4 and seeded second in the East) won't play until tomorrow, but it needs only three wins to become the national champions.

"Sure it's for superstition," senior Lou Body said as he rubbed his stubble two weeks ago after Harvard's ECAC quarterfinal sweep of Cornell. "I'm going to grow it as long as we keep on playing."

[Or is the extra facial hair being sported to intimidate Harvard's opponents?]

At 8:30 tomorrow night, the Crimson will face the winner of tonight's 8:30 match between the University of New Hampshire (24-11-3), seeded third in the East, and the East's sixth seed, Rensselaer (21-10-4).

Both tonight's and tomorrow's matches in the East will be held in Albany's Knickerbocker Arena.

The Crimson players don't care whom they will face. But the Engineers are a very familiar foe, while Harvard hasn't faced UNH since Harvard's 1988-89 national championship season (a 4-3 Crimson win in overtime).

Harvard went 2-1 against RPI this year, having won the two most recent games--7-5 at Harvard on February 25 and a 3-0 shut-out in the ECAC tournament final this past Saturday. The Crimson would have been 3-0 against the Engineers if RPI goalie Neil Little hadn't turned in a super human 45-save performance in a 4-3 RPI victory back in December up at Troy, N.Y.

Thus, RPI lives and dies by its goaltender, and by its defense to an extent. The Engineers have limited their opponents to three goals a game, while captain Ron Pasco (17 goals, 40 assists, 57 points) powers their offense.

RPI has had an up-and-down season, going 6-5 in its first 11 contests and just 6-4-2 in its last 12 games. The Engineers, however, have had a nine-game unbeaten streak, and its defense has not allowed more than three goals against in each of its last four games.

One added catch about a possible rematch between Harvard and RPI is that the East regional is being held minutes away from the RPI campus, so that the Crimson would have the same feeling as if it were playing another road game.

The other possible opponent is UNH, who is also on a relative cold streak entering the tournament. The Wildcats are a surprise team as the East's third seed, considering that they lost to the West's third seed, UMass-Lowell, last Friday and could only muster a tie against the West's fifth seed, Northeastern, the following night.

UNH, like RPI, has been an inconsistent team. The Wildcats started their season with seven straight wins, including a 6-3 victory at RPI, but they have gone only 17-11-3 since that stretch.

New Hampshire plays a very physical style of game both before and after the whistle, with one player--Scott Malone--racking up 154 penalty minutes on the season, a team record.

Harvard has no say in who it will face, but the players and coaches don't seem to care which opponent it will be.

"I don't have any preferences," senior forward Chris Baird said. "Whoever it's going to be, our coaches will have us prepared."

Should the Crimson win tomorrow, it would fly out to St. Paul, Minn. for a national semifinal on Thursday against either the West's number-one seed--Michigan--or the victor of the Lake Superior St./Northeastern match, if that team should knock off Michigan.

The brand of hockey played in the CCHA and WCHA is a much more clutch-and-grab, physical style than the ECAC version, as Harvard saw in its 3-0 loss at Minnesota-Duluth in December.

Harvard has had its problems against these pesky teams, most recently in the first ECAC quarterfinal game against Cornell, where Harvard had to come back twice and saw its three-goal lead cut to one with 10 minutes to play.

But should Harvard win the semifinal, it would face one of six teams from the other half of the draw. The top two teams are Boston University (the East's top seed and the nation's top-ranked team) and the West's second seed, Minnesota.

The Terriers haven't lost a game since February 7, but that 4-2 loss was to Harvard in the Beanpot. However, Harvard has won the last two meetings between these two teams.

And who could forget Harvard's 4-3 overtime victory over the Golden Gophers in the 1989 national championship match? That tournament, too, finished in St. Paul, Minn.

But back to the facial hair thing.

The players really do look funny with the sprouts coming out, but if that's the team unity or the superstition that will get the Crimson a national championship, then not too many people in Cambridge should complain.

As sophomore Aaron Israel said, "I've gotten a lot of comments about [the beard], but..."