CHF's ECACHL Women's Quarterfinals Preview - Part 1

The eight team field in this year's ECAC(HL) playoffs on the women's side looks to be the most competitive grouping ever. We'll be going over each of the quarterfinal matchups, which are best-of-three series played at the home-ice of the higher seed.

#8 Yale at #1 St. Lawrence

Yale has continued to show throughout the year that they can be a formidable team on any given day. Yale built their 11-13-5 on the back of an extremely strong schedule. In fact, a glance at Yale's schedule only shows one bad loss, that being to Connecticut 3-0 early in the season. They took victories over the teams they were expected to beat, but took heavy losses from teams they were stronger than them. Despite this, Yale's record features victories over Harvard, Brown and Dartmouth this year, all of whom are higher seeds in this year's tournament.

Yale will need to rely on stingy defense and timely scoring if they're going to beat St. Lawrence. Their top scorers, Crysti Howser and Deena Caplette both have 23 points each, which doesn't even match SLU's top scorer combined. This means junior Nina Resor and the rest of Yale's D will have to create turnovers and odd-man rushes to give Sarah Love a chance to steal a game or two for the Bulldogs. Love, a senior has a .921 Save Pct. and a 2.31 GAA for Yale in her final season.

St. Lawrence is the big gun in the ECACHL. Their record only tarnished by losses to Clarkson, St. Cloud and Colgate this year. Their record is 28-3-2, and they're a lock for this year's NCAA Tournament. They hold a 15-2-0 advantage at Appleton Arena this year, which means two things, they're dominant at home, but if you're going to steal a win you have to do it at Appleton against a high-powered offense which is second best in the country only to UNH. The Saints are lead by Patty Kazmeier finalists sophomore forward Sabrina Harbec, and senior goaltender Jessica Moffat.

Harbec has a whopping 58 points this season on 24 goals and 34 assists. She currently leads the country in scoring and assists, while SLU freshman Carson Duggan leads the country in goals with 27. Moffat has a 1.33 GAA and a .939 Save Pct. Moffat is backed up by Meghan Guckian (straight from my hometown of Victor, NY), who actually carries slightly better statistics in those two categories. Regardless, either of them between the pipes means a tough time for opposing teams.

St. Lawrence was victorious in their last two meetings, a 4-2 victory at Appleton, and a 7-1 thumping at Ingalls Rink just two weeks ago. If Yale wants to move on, they'll need to play the toughest D they've ever played, and make the most out of the limited opportunities St. Lawrence will provide. Sarah Love will need to come up big. St. Lawrence needs to make sure their goaltending is quality, throw a significant number of shots on net, and not hang their goaltender out to dry.

Ron's Predicition:

St. Lawrence 2, Yale 1

St. Lawrence 5, Yale 0

St. Lawrence wins 2-0