On Friday afternoon, the Harvard men’s hockey team faces a familiar foe in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament Northeast regional at the Worcester Centrum. And with the rematch, the Crimson hopes that the phrase “Third time’s a charm” is more than just an old saying.

Harvard will skate against Boston University at 4 p.m., meeting the Terriers for the third time this season, with both of the previous meetings having gone the Comm. Ave. way. However, the Crimson hopes to turn around recent history, and knock off the higher-seeded Terriers.

Playing the nightcap in Worcester is No. 1 seed UNH and No. 4 seed St. Cloud State. No. 2 seed BU, as the host school of the regional, was guaranteed a spot at Worcester, but Harvard’s placement at the local site came as something of a surprise. Most prognosticators expected the Crimson to play at Providence against Maine. Despite the surprise, the team was very confident when its opponent was announced Sunday night on ESPN.

“We’re a very confident team,” captain Dominic Moore said. “Last year we may have had a lot of an underdog mentality. This year we consider ourselves one of the top teams in the country.”

“Last year we got in [to the NCAA Tournament] because [the Selection Committee] had to take us [as an automatic bid as the ECAC champion],” Harvard coach Mark Mazzoleni said. “This year, we got in on our merits.”

Those credits include a 22-9-2 record, a No. 12 national ranking and a second-place finish in both the ECAC Tournament and the regular season. The Crimson’s hopes of a repeat of last year’s ECAC title ended in overtime late Saturday night when Cornell forward Sam Paolini scored the game-winning goal off an odd-man rush toward the Harvard net.

The Crimson’s performance against the No. 1 team in the country left many in Albany impressed, especially with how the team responded to the Big Red’s hard-checking, physical style.

“I think Harvard’s going to do a lot of damage in the NCAAs,” Cornell coach Mike Schafer said. “They’ve got a great hockey team.”

Against the Big Red, the third time was not the trick for the Crimson, as Cornell tied the game with half a minute left in regulation, and then went on to win 1:23 into overtime on Paolini’s shot from the faceoff circle. Still, time spent preparing for the Big Red could pay off against the Terriers.

“There’s a lot of similarities between Cornell and BU that we’ve worked on for a couple of weeks,” Mazzoleni said.

“I think BU is a big, tenacious team,” he continued. “But BU likes to get in more of a transition game than Cornell.”

As Mazzoleni said, the Terriers’ strong, physical play along the boards is much like that of the Big Red, but the tempo of the game will be very different. Where Cornell likes a slow, half-ice style of play, the BU will look to open things up in transition for its fast-skating forwards. However, emphasis on the forwards might be misplaced; in the teams’ two meetings this season, Harvard’s problem has been a combination of a faltering offense and passive defense.

In the teams’ first meeting in November at Walter Brown Arena, BU won 3-0. The second contest was in the Fleet Center on the opening night of the Beanpot. Despite scoring first, the Crimson again fell to BU, this time 2-1. The difference between the two contests: defensive pressure.

“I thought we attacked them in the Beanpot game, attacked them consistently,” Mazzoleni said. “The first time we played BU, we gave them too much space. The second time we went after them.”

“That’s definitely the way we’ve got to play on Friday,” he continued. “We’ve got to go after them.”