The Home Stretch

	Pts	Friday 2/19	Saturday 2/20	Friday 2/26	Saturday 2/27
Yale	26	SLU	Clarkson	@Princeton	@Q
Cornell	26	@Harvard	@Dartmouth	Union	RPI
Union	24	Princeton	Q	Cornell	Colgate
SLU	20	@Yale	@Brown	Dartmouth	Harvard
RPI	20	Q	Princeton	@Colgate	@Cornell
Colgate	19	@Dartmouth	@Harvard	RPI	Union
Q	18	@RPI	@Union	Brown	Yale
Harvard	17	Cornell	Colgate	@Clarkson	@SLU

The current top-8 teams in the ECAC, and their remaining schedule

With two weekends remaining in regular-season ECAC play, its time to start thinking about the postseason.  If you don’t know, every ECAC team makes the postseason.  In the first round, the top four seeds get a bye week, while teams 5-8 host teams 9-12.  The following week, teams 1-4 host the winners of the first round games.  The final 4 meet in Albany the following weekend.

Each team has regular-season 4 games remaining.  Thus, each team can add as many as 8 points to their current total if they win out (or, of course, as few as 0 if they go 0-4).  Notice that, mathematically, any of the teams above Harvard can currently surpass our total.  Also notice that, after the victory in Colgate, Harvard is unable to match our point total.  We cannot end lower than 7th, and are guaranteed a home playoff round of some sort.  Hooray!

As of right now, the standings are clustered tightly.  Only a single win separates 4th place (and a 1st round bye) from 7th place.  However, there are 11 games remaining between teams on this list.  Most teams play 3 games against others currently in the top-8 (Yale and St. Lawrence are the only exceptions, with 2 each).

There are three biggest storylines to watch over the following two weekends:

1. First Place: 5 teams are currently in reach of the league top seed, but that number could be trimmed to 3 as early as Friday when Yale hosts St. Lawrence.  A Yale victory eliminates SLU (and also Renssellaer) from contention for the top spot.  This game also is significant for Cornell: after losing both regular-season games against Yale, we would lose in a tiebreaker against Yale if we ended the season tied with them in points.  Thus, our only chance at first place is for Yale to lose more games than we do from here out (and, obviously, at least 1).  The game against SLU is the most likely one for them to lose, as the rest of their schedule is not particularly difficult.  Beyond this game, the next most interesting game in the race for 1st will be the showdown between Union and Cornell the following Friday.  We tied them at the first meeting this season, and the outcome of this game will almost certainly determine which of those two teams will finish the season higher.
2. 4th Place, the final bye spot:  Currently, SLU, RPI, and Colgate are all but dead even for the 4th spot, but only one can claim it in the end.  Furthermore, each of those teams plays one game against a higher ranked team.  Any one win against a higher-ranked team will go far towards claiming the bye (and would make life more tense for the top-3 team that lost).    Finally, Colgate hosts RPI in a head-to-head matchup on the final weekend.  While it might not guarantee the winner a bye, it will almost certainly eliminate the loser from the running.
3. 8th Place, the final team to receive a home playoff round:  Technically, Clarkson is the only team that is mathematically eliminated from a home playoff round.  In all likelihood, though, Dartmouth is also a long shot.  However, Princeton has been bouncing back late in the season, and even Brown is close enough to sniff a home playoff round.  Meanwhile, Quinnipiac has only recently recovered from a freefall, and could easily continue to far, and Harvard’s low point total leaves them on the precipice.  Though not as interesting as the first two storylines, still worth watching.

As usual, the final weeks of ECAC play should be exciting to follow, and the final seeding will be changing up until the final games.  It will be fun, so stay tuned!