Say what you will about the "decline" of ECAC hockey, but once again,
the ECAC has shown itself to be the most competetitve league. All 12
teams make the playoffs. By the quarterfinals, both the number 2 and
number 3 team were eliminated. Today, after the semis, the number 4 and
number 1 teams are gone. In this league, year after year, it continues
to be true that on any given night, anybody can beat anybody.

Tomorrow night, the championship will be contested between #7 Harvard
and #9 Clarkson.

In game 1 of the semifinals, Colgate was clearly the better skilled
team, but just as clearly, Clarkson was the team that wanted it more.
Clarkson played with intensity the entire game and more than made up for
Colgates superior skill by working hard from start to finish and never
giving up. Clarkson won this game along the boards continually going in
deep and coming away with the puck. This Clarkson team has had one its
worst seasons in years but is peaking at just the right time, sweeping
Union on the road in the first round, beating Cornell in Ithaca last
weekend and knocking off RS champion Colgate in the semifinals.

Game 2 was completely different. Although Harvard wins by the same 2-1
score as Clarkson did, they got there in a very different way. The
second game was a lot of clutching and grabbing (with a fair amount of
elbowing thrown in) and was spent more in the center of the rink with a
lot of back and forth action. The action was faster but the result was
the same as the first game: Harvard wanted it more.

Tomorrow should prove interesting. Harvard is a much faster team than
Clarkson but the Knights should be able to dominate the side and end
boards. The game will be decided by the team that has the most
disciplined defense.

The results might throw the NCAA predictions out the window. Everyone
was assuming Colgate to be the one and only ECAC team to make the
NCAA's. Now it will be either Harvard or Clarkson. The question becomes
whether or not Colgate can make it in based on their season's
performance.