The Harvard men’s hockey team got exactly what it was looking for with a weekend sweep over St. Lawrence and Clarkson: the opportunity to take the next weekend off.

The Crimson (17-10-2, 13-8-1 ECAC) needed four points on the weekend to guarantee a first-round bye in the league playoffs, which begin next Friday.

Harvard finished the regular season in fourth, and only the No. 5 through No. 12 teams play the opening weekend.

A rough-and-tumble last weekend at Colgate and Cornell had left the Crimson roster depleted—defensemen Brian McCafferty and Peter Hafner and forward Tyler Magura were all helped from the Big Red ice nine days ago, and sophomore Mike Taylor has been out for nearly a month—and only McCafferty and Hafner were able to return for this homestand and the important ECAC tournament implications it held for Harvard.

And a weekend off is not just nice for the injured—it also lets the Crimson bypass a best-of-three opening round in which anything can happen.

Despite its high finish, Harvard has lost this season to Yale and Quinnipiac, two of the teams in the league’s bottom quartet.

Furthermore, once four teams are eliminated this weekend, the seeds will all be reshuffled—and since the top four teams’ seeds don’t change due to their inactivity, they are a lock to host their quarterfinal series a week from now.

That is especially good news for a Crimson squad that is 9-2-1 at home this season and 23-3-1 in the last two years.

With Harvard resting at home, next weekend’s best-of-three first rounds consist of No. 12 Brown at No. 5 St. Lawrence, No. 11 Yale at No. 6 Union, No. 10 Quinnipiac at No. 7 Rensselaer, and No. 9 Princeton at No. 8 Clarkson.

—Staff writer Rebecca A. Seesel can be reached at seesel@fas.harvard.edu.