Harvard, if it reaches the ECAC final and the Frozen Four, will have only five days to rest between the two tournaments. But Stone prefers that arrangement.

“I like the fact that you are playing every weekend,” Stone said. “Some people might feel differently if they have injuries and want to rest their kids. Our kids are in great condition. They could play three days a week if they had to.”

Bear Trap

The results of this weekend’s ECAC quarterfinals set up the first All-Ivy semifinal round in ECAC history. Brown will play Harvard and Princeton will play Dartmouth.

“I’m proud of the fact there are a couple of Ivy schools at the top of this ECAC league,” Stone said. “If we can continue to compete with the scholarship schools, we must be doing something right.”

Princeton and Dartmouth each swept quarterfinal series in which they were heavily favored. Brown came back from a game down to win its three-game series, eliminating No. 6 St. Lawrence.

While Harvard players said they had no preference as to who won the St. Lawrence-Brown series, the Bears’ victory does offer several advantages.

Since Brown’s Meehan Auditorium is the host site for the ECAC championships, the Bears’ quarterfinal victory is bound to boost attendance, which will increase exposure for the sport.

Brown’s victory over St. Lawrence guaranteed that the Bears would avoid a sub-.500 finish. Since Harvard has two victories over Brown and one NCAA seeding criterion is record against teams at or above .500, Brown’s victory might help Harvard earn a No. 1 seed in the Frozen Four. In fact, if the selection committee uses records as the only proxy for the stated selection criteria—a method used by the USCHO.com Pairwise Rankings that has yet to be contradicted in men’s or women’s hockey—then Brown’s victory actually clinched the top seed for Harvard.

The Bears’ victory will also give the Crimson the experience of playing in front of a hostile crowd that could number over 2,000, judging by past ECAC championship attendance figures. Harvard will have to experience a similarly unfriendly crowd if it has to face Duluth on the Bulldogs’ home ice for the NCAA title. But the Crimson players have said in the past that hostile fans do not bother them.

“I think there’s a great atmosphere going into the playoffs,” Stone said. “It’s time to go take over somebody else’s barn.”

In the next two weekends, there are two barns to be taken over, but the Crimson will try to focus on taking them one barn at a time.

—Staff writer David R. De Remer can be reached at remer@fas.harvard.edu.