Ice Restrictions
One other obstacle for Harvard to overcometonight is the Boston Garden ice itself, Thesurface measures 191 feet by 83 feet, which issmaller than that at the Bright Hockey Center.
Even professional teams seem to get screwed-upwhen they find out that their speed often getsneutralized by one of the smallest ice surfaces inthe NHL.
Harvard does rely on speed and quick break-outpasses, but the team found a way to score sevenand four goals, respectively, in last year'stournament.
National Ramifications
Winning the Beanpot for the sake of winning isalways the main goal, but tonight's game has amajor bearing on national rankings and theupcoming 12-team NCAA tournament in late March.
Harvard competes in the ECAC, which hasn'tearned the type of respect that the three othermain hockey conferences--Hockey East, WCHA andCCHA--have had over the past few seasons.
Harvard is the only ECAC team that hasconsistently stayed in the top ten (Rensselaer hasmade the list a couple of times) this year. Theother three Beanpot entrants are Hockey Eastschools, which has had BU, Northeastern, Maine,and New Hampshire on the list.
"[The Beanpot] means a lot for nationalrankings in the East," Farrell says. "It would benice if beating BU would make us the number-oneteam in the East for the [NCAA] tournament."