Seriously, though, you have to think hockey would’ve gone over well with the Anglo Saxons and their mead-hall crowd. There is something special about this game, truly a gentleman’s sport. Men (and women) pulverize one another with sticks while adhering (most of the time) to an honor code that is equal parts law-bound and unspoken.

Then they shake hands.

“What happens on the ice,” Leisenring said, “stays on the ice.”

It’s fairly common for ECAC hockey players to see familiar faces on the opposition. Though it’s not to the same extent it was 25 (or even 15) years ago, a fair number of league players come from New England prep schools.

Again, consider the Harvard-Vermont match-up, which will see another renewal in tonight’s playoff opener at Bright. Harvard senior Tim Pettit and sophomore Peter Hafner both played at The Taft School, as did Vermont’s Ben Driver, Tim Plant, Travis Russell and Jaime Sifers.

Hafner, Driver, Russell and Sifers all graduated from Taft in 2002 and were very close friends during their time there. “You couldn’t imagine a nicer kid than Peter Hafner, just so genuine,” said Sifers, who also played alongside Hafner on Taft’s lacrosse team. “We did the same sports, the same seasons, the same workouts. We were together all the time.”

All that changed, of course, when Hafner came to Cambridge and Sifers headed north. That became even clearer in the first period of Harvard’s visit to Vermont last season, when Hafner—with a six-inch height advantage—caught Sifers with his shoulder, opening a cut on his friend’s chin.

Sifers left the game to get stitched up but returned soon afterward. He let Hafner hear it. “He was jawing at me the rest of the game,” Hafner recalled, laughing. “He’s not everyone’s best friend on the ice, but off the ice, he’s an excellent guy.”

Sifers knew Pettit as a hockey and lacrosse teammate—not to mention his hall monitor during his sophomore year. Sifers vividly remembers one practice that year when he was defending Pettit and made the mistake of watching the puck rather than playing the body. Pettit deftly pushed the puck through Sifers’s legs. “He burned me,” Sifers admitted.

Taft coach Mike Maher then asked Sifers if he had at least gotten a good look at the puck. Sifers said yes. Nevertheless, Maher made Sifers skate for the last hour of practice with a puck inside his helmet cage. “It’s funny now,” Sifers said, “but it wasn’t funny then.”

Tonight, Sifers will go up against his old teammates again. The stakes are much higher, even though the players are the same. “Timmy Pettit hasn’t changed a bit,” Sifers said. “His slapshot is still ridiculous.”

It’s hard to wax nostalgic now, with every team in the ECAC playing to keep its season alive, but there is little doubt that the bonds forged at ages 16 and 17 are still meaningful, regardless of school colors.

Harvard senior assistant captain Rob Fried, for example, has kept tabs on Oriel McHugh, his teammate for two years at Deerfield Academy. McHugh, whom Fried described as having a “quiet intensity about him,” has become one of the league’s better defensive defensemen and is the Catamounts’ captain. “It’s just great to see how he’s gone up in the UVM program,” Fried said.

Yet, if Fried finds himself in the corner with McHugh tonight—or vice versa—no one has any illusions about what will happen. Same goes for all the others—except for Femenella, who sustained a season-ending injury last weekend at Brown.

“You’re enemies on the ice,” Sifers said, “and best friends off it.”