They’re back.

No team has given the Harvard men’s hockey team more trouble over the course of the season than the Yale Bulldogs. The Crimson dropped both of the meetings between the two teams by a combined score of 10-3, its worst differential against any opponent all season.

With Yale returning to town next weekend for the best-of-three opening round of the ECAC playoffs, Harvard knows that, even as the No. 7 seed to the Bulldogs’ No. 10, it cannot afford to take its opponent lightly.

“Coming out and playing Yale, we have a lot to prove, because they’ve really just beaten up on us twice this year,” senior goalie Justin Tobe says. “It’s an interesting draw for us, you can say we’re kind of by nature the school’s archrivals.”

The two previous showdowns with the Bulldogs showcased some of the Crimson’s most glaring flaws.

Harvard’s first matchup with Yale, a 5-2 loss at home, was characteristic of the team’s early-season struggles. The Crimson had opportunities to make the score much closer, but a series of missed chances on offense and mental mistakes—including a rash of penalties--allowed the Bulldogs to pull away, dropping Harvard to 1-6 in the ECAC.

“They beat us 5-2, but the score didn’t reflect the game at all,” captain Dylan Reese says. “It was definitely much closer, and I think we should have won the game.”

The Crimson was eventually able to break out of its early-season slump, and rode a three-game unbeaten streak into its next game against Yale, this time in New Haven. Despite the momentum, however, the contest was a disaster, a 5-1 blowout with few redeeming qualities.

“The last game at Yale was probably our worst game in the last 10 games or 15 games,” Reese says. “Being a homecoming for them, they just took it to us, and we weren’t prepared.”

Now, having lost to the Bulldogs both at home and on the road, both when mired in a slump and riding a winning streak, Harvard has one last chance to down Yale, or see its season end. Because of the team’s lack of a strong non-conference record, an at-large bid to the NCAA’s is something of a remote possibility.

“There’s no doubt about it: we need to win the ECAC tournament to go the NCAA tournament,” Tobe says.

As it prepares to face this win-or-go-home challenge, the Crimson has never been in better shape. Harvard enters the playoffs riding the momentum of a season-ending sweep of Colgate and rival Cornell, a solid weekend of play that ranks as perhaps its best of the season.

During those two final games, the Crimson proved it could do all of the things it had struggled to do all year: score even-strength goals, deliver on special teams, play solid defense, and even find some stability in net with the return of Tobe to a starting role.

“All year, I think that our team has looked at it as: we have the right group of guys, we have the right systems from our coaches, we have the right personnel, it’s just a matter of executing,” Tobe says.

This improvement in all faculties of its game is what the team hopes will make this showdown with the Bulldogs go differently.

“Not to take anything away from Yale,” senior Kevin Du says, “but I really don’t believe they’ve seen our best yet.”

—Staff writer Daniel J. Rubin-Wills can be reached at drubin@fas.harvard.edu. —Staff writer Karan Lodha contributed to the reporting of this story.