Entering play last Friday, the third-place Colgate men’s hockey team would have been delighted to learn that No. 11 Harvard, just one point ahead in second in the ECAC, would wrap up its weekend road trip with only a loss and a tie to show for its pair of overtime efforts.

But come Saturday night, it was the Crimson’s skaters who were smiling—or at least breathing a sigh of relief—after the Raiders mustered just a single point of their own on the trek through North Country, tying St. Lawrence, 3-3, before falling 5-3 at Clarkson’s hands one night later.

In control of its own destiny after drawing even with Harvard Friday night against the Saints, Colgate coughed up four goals to the Golden Knights in the first 25:08 Saturday evening to fall behind by three, sealing its No. 3 seed.

That failure to capitalize on the Crimson’s stumbles will, in practice, mean little to either the Raiders or Harvard, both of whom now face virtually identical paths to Albany, provided that at least three of the tournament’s first-round favorites hold serve in their respective home rinks. The ECAC playoffs do not, like many more familiar post-season championships, employ a bracket in which teams are assigned an initial seed that determines their course to the final game, regardless of upsets.

Instead, the ECAC rewards its top regular-season performers by re-seeding after each round of play, matching the top seed with the lowest remaining one and thereby ensuring that the No. 1 team—this year Cornell—has the smoothest road to a potential title. Should the majority of opening-round winners be culled from seeds five through eight, the Crimson and Colgate will both, because of that pairing method, face sub-.500 opponents separated by one to three points at season’s end.

And if both advance to the conference semifinals in Albany, N.Y., Harvard and the Raiders would face each other, provided Cornell had not been ousted in the second round. In that case, the Crimson would face the team that had downed Cornell while Colgate would pair with the winner of the second-round series hosted by Vermont. Of course, with more than a week to rest and their future opponents as yet undetermined, neither side is looking that far ahead just yet.

“I think it’s important that we just take advantage of this time,” Harvard coach Ted Donato ’91 said Saturday night. “Whoever we play in the next round will have to play [this weekend] and then travel to come play us.”

PAIRWISE OUTLOOK

Two weeks ago, the Crimson knocked off Clarkson, St. Lawrence, and Brown in convincing fashion, then fell to No. 11 in the pairwise rankings (PWR).

Days later, Harvard lost to Dartmouth, then tied Vermont. And now? The Crimson sits in eighth in the PWR, projected to receive a second seed in the NCAA tournament.

There is a method to this mathematical formula’s madness, however. Harvard’s boost had little, if anything, to do with its own struggles. But perfectly timed missteps from UMass-Lowell, Boston University, and New Hampshire—all of which held a narrow lead over the Crimson a week ago—allowed Harvard to salvage an otherwise forgettable weekend.

Mass.-Lowell twice lost to Maine, BU dropped a home matchup with Northeastern three days after the sides battled to a draw, and New Hampshire tied, then lost to Boston College. While the opponents might not seem relevant, they are within the context of the PWR. Because Maine, Northeastern, and BC are all in the running for NCAA berths of their own, their victories over the teams with whom the Crimson is jockeying for NCAA positioning count twice—first, in the general win-loss column, and second, in the teams’ record against “teams under consideration.”

The double whammy Mass.-Lowell, BU, and Maine each suffered was enough to boost Harvard from a low No. 3 seed to a low No. 2. But with regular-season play drawing to a close nationwide this weekend and plenty more high-profile matchups capable of dropping the Crimson right back down, Harvard’s skaters will certainly be watching the results.

“We’re going to keep working hard, and obviously, we’ve got to take care of the ECAC tournament,” Crimson captain Noah Welch said Saturday. “But we know what the overall picture’s all about, and guys are confident.”

—Staff writer Timothy J. McGinn can be reached at mcginn@fas.harvard.edu.