M. Hockey Looks To Advance in ECACs

The Harvard men’s hockey team travels to the North Country for its ECAC semifinal game with second-seeded Clarkson at the Olympic Arena in Lake Placid, N.Y. today.

To advance to Saturday’s championship game, the Crimson will have to defeat the Golden Knights—something it has been unable to do all season.

In advancing to the ECAC semis, the Crimson swept Brown in a best-of-three series. For the semifinal and final rounds of the tournament, the format is single elimination, so the Crimson will have no margin for error in Lake Placid.

Harvard faces the Golden Knights (17-13-6, 11-6-5 ECAC) in the afternoon game. The night game will feature top-seeded Cornell against RPI, the winner of last night’s play-in game over Dartmouth.

While the Crimson was dispatching Brown in double overtime last Saturday night, Clarkson was polishing off its neighbor, St. Lawrence, in 6-1 blowout.

The Crimson has struggled against Clarkson this season, tying the Golden Knights 2-2 at Bright Hockey Center in early December before suffering a 4-1 loss on the road in the middle of February. Despite Harvard’s troubles against Clarkson this year, Harvard coach Mark Mazzoleni thinks the Crimson are on equal footing with the Golden Knights.

“We match up pretty well with them,” he said.

Harvard heads north aware of Clarkson’s strategy—slow down the tempo of the game and attempt to force turnovers.

“We’ve got to be very good about our decisions [so] that we don’t turn the puck over,” Mazzoleni said. “They play a very controlled style. They play a system that always allows them to have three men back.”

Clarkson employs two defensemen and one forward in both its forecheck and netural zone defense.

To counter that defensive posture, Mazzoleni emphasized a clear strategy for advancing the puck into the Clarkson zone.

“The puck has to keep going forward with someone away from the puck always going towards the puck,” Mazzoleni said.

The Crimson has been working on plays to counter the Clarkson system since Sunday. Another adjustment that Mazzoleni has been working with the team on is the way they play the puck on the penalty kill.

One facet of Harvard’s defeat at Clarkson was the Crimson’s weak play on the penalty kill, a problem Mazzoleni hoped to address with more aggressive pressure on the man with the puck to prevent further penetration, or a pass from the blue line further into the zone.

“The last time we played them, we were more passive, giving them too much time and space, and allowing them to make plays off it,” he said.

In addition to taking care of the puck and providing stronger defense and pressure on the penalty kill, the Crimson will need another strong performance from freshman goaltender Dov Grumet-Morris. Grumet-Morris came up with two huge games against Brown, and the Crimson will need his stonewalling to beat Clarkson.

“Dov is going to be a very good goalie,” Mazzoleni said. “I really like his competitive instinct.”

One factor aiding Clarkson in its quest for a slow tempo will be the television timeouts, which result in automatic stoppages at the 16-, 12- and 8-minute marks. Harvard rarely plays televised games, and the unusual stoppages could disrupt the Crimson’s fast-paced rhythm.

On the other side of the coin, playing at Olympic Arena should help the Crimson. With its larger ice surface, Olympic Arena will allow plenty of extra space for Harvard’s fastest skaters, like junior Dominic Moore and sophomore Tyler Kolarik, to maneuver with the puck.

The Crimson will also be bolstered by the return to the lineup of sohomores Kenny Turano and Dennis Packard, who were both absent from Saturday’s win over Brown. Freshman Noah Welch and sophomore Tim Pettit, who have had a week to recuperate as well, should be closer to 100 percent than last weekend, when they both played slightly injured.

The Crimson look to be at close to full speed coming off its most consistent efforts of the season. The momentum they gained against Brown will be key heading into the biggest game of the season.

“We’re probably playing our best hockey of the season,” Grumet-Morris said.

“If we play the way we’re capable of, we’ll be in a position to come out victorious.”

Face-off is 4 p.m.