"Some like it hot, and some sweat when the heat is on," Power Station

Make that first "some" Yale and that second "some" Harvard, and you've got a fair picture of tonight's men's hockey game at Bright Center.

When these two teams first faced off back in November, the site was cozy Ingalls rink, superheated to help the ponderous but powerful Eli forwards turn the corners into a matched set of hydraulic presses that spat out flattened Crimson players all evening.

The result was a 7-5 Crimson loss and a bad start for a Harvard squad that had been ranked in the top four in the nation before it had played a single game.

At 7:30 tonight, the rivals go at it again. The Crimson is rejuvenated, now 10-4-1 overall (10-2 in the ECAC and 5-1 in the Ivy League). The squad is ranked in the top five nationally and sits atop the ECAC with more than half the league schedule played.

The Elis have been falling since their opening-day victory over Harvard.

"We've gone downhill since then," Yale Coach Tlm Taylor says. "We haven't played with the same emotion or intelligence."

The Elis are now 12-6 overall, fifth in the ECAC at 8-4 and 4-2 in the Ivy League after losses to Princeton and Cornell. The Bulldogs have also fallen out of the national polls after several weeks in the second five.

And, if we believe Power Station, the Elis will be the ones sweating tonight. Cozy little Bright Center will be cooled down to give the Crimson the slick ice it needs to skate circles around the hulking Elis,

Bright should be packed to the rafters. All reserved seats have long been sold out and the standing room tickets that go on sale before the game should go quickly.

And regardless of the crowd, regardless of the cool ice, the players will be plenty heated for a battle that has come to be one of the biggest on the Harvard schedule.

"We're confident we can knock Harvard off," Eli Captain Scott Webster says.

"I don't think there's a doubt in anyone's mind that we should win this game," Crimson Captain Scott Fusco says.

The Crimson lost the last showdown between the clubs thanks to six power play goals by the Elis. The Crimson took 10 penalties and paid for most of them.

Since then the Harvard power play has found itself and the Crimson has upped its penalty killing percentage to over 71 percent with 15 straight penalty kills.