There's a bit of history attached to the last weekend of the Harvard men's hockey team's regular season.

Harvard (for the last few years at least) plays Clarkson at St. Lawrence. These three perennial ECAC powers can usually be counted on to generate fireworks.

Two years ago, fifth-place Harvard did the remarkable: now - Boston Bruin Ted Donato '91 and unheralded Scott Barringer '91 led the Crimson to a sweep of Clarkson and St. Lawrence, then the top two teams in the league and Harvard took home ice in the playoffs.

Last year, first-place Harvard did the unthinkable, falling to Clarkson and then collapsing against St. Lawrence in upstate New York. Brown performed the Heimlich maneuver, though, edging out Clarkson that weekend to insure that choking Harvard retained first-place and the ECAC regular-season title.

This year, the scenario is less grand.

Harvard has the league title wrapped up, and unless you care about the shuffling of the ECAC playoffs, the weekend schedule looks about as exciting the North Dakota landscape.

Still Gotta Win

However, Harvard (19-3-2 overall, 16-2-2 ECAC) still needs to win these games and it is favored to do so. It slipped a few notches in the polls to sixth this past week after losing to Dartmouth and victories over 10th-ranked Clarkson (15-9-4, 11-6-3) and perennially strong St. Lawrence (16-9-3, 11-7-2) would help add a little glitter to the Crimson's tarnished reputation.

Harvard Coach Ronn Tomassoni insisted that his team is keeping its focus on sweeping the weekend.

"These games are just as important," Tomassoni said. "Every time we go on that ice we want to win, and they're big for that reason alone."

Make no mistake. As the ECAC and NCAA Tournaments--approach, these are "big" games.

"They're big from standpoint of wanting to play well going to playoffs," Tomassoni said. "And they're also big for looking down the road. We're not there yet, but you have to be mature about things and look at NCAA seedings. The two criteria for that are winning percentage and the record in your last ten games. Obviously winning these games would fall under those categories."

Wants Top Spot

Harvard is virtually guaranteed a spot to the 12-team post-season tournament, but it wants one of the top two spots in the East.

That would insure a first-round bye and the blessing of not having to play Maine--which is certain to be ranked first in the East--until the Final Four in Milwaukee.