ALBANY, N.Y.—A year ago, in the inaugural edition of the ECAC Men’s Ice Hockey Championship in Albany, the Harvard Crimson and the Cornell Big Red waged a classic overtime battle for the Whitelaw Trophy. It was, in most respects, a prime example of how “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” Just a year previous, the ECAC’s last year at 1980 Olympic Arena in Lake Placid, the Crimson and the Big Red waged a thrilling 96-minute marathon in the championship.

This year, there will be no Ithacan foil to the Cantabridgians. But there will also be an abrupt end to Harvard’s season should it fall to any of the remaining three teams—Dartmouth, Clarkson or Colgate.

By virtue of its regular season struggles, Harvard must win the ECAC Championship (and its accompanying NCAA auto-bid) to prolong its season and enter the NCAA Tournament for the third straight time.

“I like it better this way: We make the tournament if we win, but if we lose, our season’s over,” said junior defenseman Noah Welch. “That’s the same mentality we had my freshman year. It’s do or die. You lose, you go home.

“But if we do win these two games and advance, when you get [to the NCAAs], you’ve had the experience of winning your tournament, whereas other teams maybe lost and didn’t have that,” he continued.

The Crimson and the Big Green square off in an all-Ivy tilt at 7:45 p.m. while the early semifinal pits No. 1 seed Colgate against Big Red giant-killer Clarkson.

Harvard’s quest to win the ECAC begins tonight against Dartmouth, a rematch of the teams’ 4-0 victory in the regular season finale less than three weeks ago, a fact that gives the Crimson a fair amount of confidence.

“For whatever reason, we’ve had a lot of success against Dartmouth in the past,” said senior forward Tim Pettit. “Their strength was always defense, now it’s offense. But their goaltender’s been great lately, too, with two consecutive shutouts.”

His coach agrees.

“When you look at them, [Dartmouth] could have the best group of forwards in the ECAC,” Mazzoleni said. “Jessiman, Ouellette and Stempniak are three very, very elite forwards and they have the ability to single-handedly affect the game.”

Yale coach Tim Taylor also agrees, but he emphasizes—as Pettit did—the emergence of the Big Green’s defense.

“Dartmouth has arguably the best forwards in the league—that’s the strength of their team,” Taylor said. “But they’ve recommitted themselves to defense.”

The central figure in that commitment to defense has been the performance of Dan Yacey, Dartmouth’s goaltender. Yacey, in his first full season in net, has been steadily improving, recording a .913 save percentage and a 2.44 goals against average over the course of the season. And in his last two games against Rensselaer, Yacey recorded 65 saves in consecutive shutouts. So the Big Green enters Albany with a lot of confidence and momentum on its side.

“Harvard has an awful lot of momentum going into Albany,” Taylor said. “Their big guns like Kolarik and Pettit are on track again and starting to score...when [Harvard] is firing on all cylinders, it’s probably the most talented team in the league.”

Harvard’s big guns certainly were firing in its two-game sweep of Brown. Each of the team’s offensive “Big Three” of Pettit, assistant captain Tyler Kolarik and junior Tom Cavanagh, tallied three points on the weekend and in last Saturday’s overtime win, they accounted for all three Crimson scores.

The matchup of Harvard’s talented forwards against Dartmouth’s hot goaltender favors the Crimson. The reverse of that matchup will also be critical: how does Harvard junior goaltender Dov Grumet-Morris hold up against Hugh Jessiman, Mike Ouellette and Lee Stempniak (the most talented forwards in the ECAC, according to Mazzoleni, Taylor and others)?

And the answer this year has been quite well. In two games this season, one in early November, the other at the end of February, Grumet-Morris has allowed only two goals on 65 shots, helped in large measure by the effective job the Crimson’s defensemen have done at shutting down the mix of size and speed that are Dartmouth’s forwards.

From almost an angle of measurement, Harvard should be favored to advance to the ECAC finals with a win in tonight’s game against Dartmouth.

“[Harvard] is going to be a team to be reckoned with,” agreed Taylor.

BRIEFLY

Injured senior winger Kenny Turano (ankle) will not dress for the weekend…Harvard’s fourth line will feature junior Rob Flynn, assistant captain Rob Fried and senior Blair Barlow in the spot where Turano and sophomore Danny Murphy have occasssionally played this season…For interested fans, tickets are still available to the ECAC Championships, both single day passes (good for two games) and weekend passes. To order tickets go to pepsiarena.com...For those not in the Albany area, the games will be televised on the CN8, Adelphia and Time Warner cable networks. For those without cable television (i.e. residing in almost any Harvard dorm room) a live webcast will be available at www.cn8.tv.

—Staff writer Timothy M. McDonald can be reached at tmcdonal@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Jon Paul Morosi contributed to the reporting in this story.