The road to the ECAC title still follows I-93, but the path to the crown travels a little further north this year. Keep straight until the I-89 interchange and then just follow the signs for Hanover. Dartmouth, and not Harvard, is this year’s team to beat.

The Big Green enters the season ranked atop the ECAC Preseason Coaches Poll, capturing five of 10 first-place votes and 77 points, five more in the balloting than the second-place Crimson, which received three first-place votes and 72 points. Not far behind, St. Lawrence comes into the season predicted to finish third, with two first-place votes and 68 points.

And those three don’t figure to be separated by much in the season’s opening weeks. Harvard and Dartmouth meet for the first time on Jan. 11, while the Crimson and the Saints don’t face off until Feb. 20.

But Harvard had better not get too focused on those games just yet. There are quite a few names on the schedule that might put an end to the Crimson’s NCAA aspirations even sooner.

“The thing I always draw attention to is that we play, in my opinion, the most competitive schedule in the country, if not one of the top two competitive schedules in the country,” says Harvard coach Katey Stone. “So you’re going to find out pretty quickly how good you are.”

Dartmouth

Although the challenge of facing down Dartmouth is one that any Crimson team would relish, this year’s Harvard squad won’t even have to dig that deep to find its motivation.

Though the Crimson handled the Big Green in both regular season matchups last season, Dartmouth emerged on top in the third and most important game—the ECAC Championship.

For the fourth consecutive year in the ECAC tournament, the puck bounced the Big Green’s way, as No. 1 Harvard was embarrassed 7-2, bringing the Crimson’s 27-match unbeaten steak to an end in a most ignominious prelude to the Frozen Four.

“Dartmouth is obviously always a huge, huge opponent,” says co-captain Lauren McAuliffe. [There’s a] huge rivalry there.”

Though Dartmouth will see a new face behind the helm, the change will be in appearance only, as the Big Green will continue using a rough style of play to beat down opponents.

Gone is legendary Dartmouth coach Judy Oberting who retired at the end of last season. Filling her shoes is Mark Hudak, an assistant whose military career at West Point predisposes him to the same brand of physical play Oberting utilized.

“They’re going to be good,” Stone says. “Their coach is good.”

But the talent from which he will mold his team is not of the quality Oberting upended the Crimson with late last season.

Gone are Correne Bredin, a defenseman with the Canadian national team, and Amy Ferguson, whose goaltending marks clutter the Dartmouth record books.