Cornell's netminders--Andy Bandurski and Eddy Skazyk--have been battered all season. They see a lot more rubber than many other teams--1,008 shots have been directed towards the Cornell duo, while, for example, Tracy and Israel have only faced 648. But both Big Red netminders have stopped over 88 percent of the shots thrown their way.

Specialty Teams: The Crimson's power play ranks second in the nation, clicking at 32.5 percent. And Harvard is hot of late, having scored four power-play goals last Saturday at St. Lawrence.

The penalty-killing units have slipped a little bit in recent games, allowing five extra-man goals against in its last two games.

The Big Red again leaves a lot to be desired. Cornell has converted only 15.2 percent of its power plays, while opponents are clicking at a 23.3 percent rate. However, if Cornell can goad Harvard into taking enough bad penalties, then the Big Red will have a realistic shot at staying very close in the series.

"I can't afford to get as many penalties as I [have been taking]," said Martins, the ECAC's top scorer but also Harvard's leading penalty-minute man. "Knowing that they're going to be physical, they're going to try to take us out of the game mentally. We have to be all the more prepared."

Momentum: Both teams come into this weekend's series off of big overtime victories. Harvard's 5-4 win at St. Lawrence was made possible by Farrell's power-play goal with but four ticks left regulation and junior Perry Cohagan's goal with 56 seconds left in overtime.

Furthermore, the Crimson has not lost a game at home all year--its last ECAC loss was back on December 4, at RPI.

Although Cornell ended its regular season with two bad losses--9-1 at RPI and 5-2 at Union--the Big Red beat Princeton at Ithaca this past Tuesday in overtime, 5-4, in the preliminary round of ECAC playoff competition.

The Big Red rallied back from 3-2 and 4-3 deficits in the third and won the game on Geoff Lopatka's third goal of the game 15:58 into overtime. Skazyk stopped 20 of the 21 shots he faced after the Tigers scored three goals in a 2:45 span against Bandurski in the second period.

"We want to win these two games and go into the final four of the ECAC," McCann said. "[Cornell is] going to come out really hard. They are a tough team and put out 100 percent all the time on every shift."

"We want to take control from the first face-off to the end of the game. If we do that we can win both games."