“We’ve talked all season about not worrying what the other team is doing,” Baumgartner said. “BU is a great team, but…we need to execute the things we know how to do and beat them with our game plan instead of trying to tailor it to what they’ve prepared for us.”

The Crimson enters Tuesday night’s game on the tail of an impressive weekend of ECAC play.

Harvard outscored its opponents, 15-0, in its last three games, claiming shutout victories over ECAC foes Colgate, Brown, and Yale.

“[The wins this weekend] give us momentum and confidence,” Dempsey said. “We’re excited and feel pretty confident going into Tuesday.”

And the possibility of garnering Boston-area bragging rights isn’t the only reason the Crimson places a lot of importance on this particular set of games.

“Every game is taken just as intensely, but the Beanpot is pretty special for us because it’s the four Boston schools,” junior forward Kaitlin Spurling said. “We’re super excited for that and taking it day by day. We want to put ourselves in the best position possible so that we can make the [ECAC] tournament at the end of the season.”

ECAC playoffs kick off in a few weeks, and Harvard—currently ranked second in the conference—looks to contend for the title.

“I like the Beanpot because it’s a couple weeks before our playoffs,” Baumgartner said. “These are the games you want to play in because it gets that energy and anticipation up. You know that if you don’t win the game, you’re going home. It’s perfect timing for the Beanpot because it really forces you to dig deep and say that we need to win this.”

—Staff writer Catherine E. Coppinger can be reached at ccoppinger@college.harvard.edu.