With a trio of forwards that has combined for 90 points—Tyler Burton, Jon Smyth, and Adam Mitchell—Colgate certainly has its weapons.
“They play their game really well,” said Crimson captain Noah Welch of the Raiders squad that defeated Brown 4-1 and 3-0 last weekend to advance to tonight’s seminfinal. “It’s not too flashy—they can make plays, but they just go to the net and keep it simple.”
It’s a stategy that Harvard as often employed to its benefit. The Crimson, which felled St. Lawrence 2-0 and 3-2 in last weekend’s quarterfinals, boasts 12 skaters with double-digit points, nine with more than 15, and two with more than 20. Many of these goals and assists came on gritty, net-crashing play, and Cavanagh leads the squad with 26, a tie for the lowest total of an ECAC team-leader.
But Colgate has already stymied this balanced attack twice, and despite the list of excuses—layoffs and early-season struggles ranking high—Donato was frank when he said, “I think they have a lot to do with us not scoring.”
Of course, Harvard has a solid defensive corps of its own—with a 1.77 goals-per-game average, it ranks second nationally—and the team hopes it will help replicate the success of recent years. The current senior class has gone 15-1, winning the championship twice and falling only to Cornell in double-overtime.
“It’s better than being 1-15,” admitted goaltender Dov Grumet-Morris, who has been between the pipes for all 16 contests, though he added, “this year is a very, very competitive ECAC final four...so I think that it raises the stakes.”
And when the puck drops tonight, Harvard will be looking to settle some scores.
The contest is single-elimination, but this one victory could do wonders in erasing memories of two regular-season losses.
“They’re the only ones that took us in our building this year,” Lannon said, “and we want to take them out Friday night—not just for the semifinals, but because we haven’t beaten them, and we feel like we owe them one.”
—Staff writer Rebecca A. Seesel can be reached at seesel@fas.harvard.edu.