The Crimson have been outshot 30-21 in the first period of games this season and have fallen behind by large margins in their past three games.

The Crimson trailed 6-1 against Brown, 9-3 against Dartmouth, and 9-0 against Duke, only coming out victorious against the Big Green.

Getting off to a good start will be no easy task against Cornell, which has outscored opponents 25-15 in the first period this season.

“I think we need to come out with more confidence,” Smith said. “We’ve shown in the second half that we’ve done really well, so we’ve got to come out flying.”

Neither team hurts itself with penalties; Cornell and Harvard rank 1-2 respectively in the conference in fewest penalties committed.

But while the Big Red is first in the conference with a .762 penalty-killing percentage, Harvard ranks dead last in the Ivy in that category, with a .478 percentage.

For all its impressive statistics, Cornell has only defeated one ranked team—current No. 18 Yale—so far this year. The team is coming off a bad game of its own, a shocking 8-6 upset loss to Dartmouth. The Crimson is 1-3 against ranked opponents in 2010.

Last season, the two teams played an extremely close game in at Schoellkopf Field, with the Big Red coming away victorious, 13-12.

Despite holding a lead for 44 minutes and getting up by as many as four goals, Harvard was outscored 4-1 in the contest’s final 20 minutes.

Hurley had both the game-tying and go-ahead goals in that game, one that has stuck in the Crimson players’ minds for over a year.

“We definitely had a bad taste in our mouth when we left Cornell last year,” Cohen said. “I think we could’ve had them.”

And despite the challenge the Big Red pose, Harvard believes it will be able to get its retribution.

“I’d say we’ve put the Duke game out of our minds,” Cohen said. “We’ve tried to move on. We had a good week of practice, so we’re all very confident going into next week. We all understand its probably the biggest game of the season.”