Playoffs On Ice

Sarah Fillier has 54 points in her freshman women's hockey season at Princeton University.

Those 54 points have come on 20 goals and 34 assists, which isn't surprising, given how well she sees the ice and what a great feeder she is. Do they say "feeder" in hockey?

There are seven players in Division I women's hockey who have reached the 50-point mark for the season, and only four others have reached 54. 

Of the other six who have gotten to at least 50, 1) they've all played at least seven more games than Fillier and 2) none are freshmen. In fact, of those other six, one has played 34 games while the other five have played either 36 or 37. Fillier has played 27.

Fillier actually leads Division I in points per game at 2.0. She is a finalist for three major ECAC awards: Player of the Year, Rookie of the Year and Forward of the Year.

Oh, and the record for points in a season by a Princeton freshman? It's 61. And who holds it? Ford Family Director of Athletics Mollie Marcoux Samaan, who set the record in the 1987-88 season.

Fillier gets a chance to try to get closer to catching Marcoux Samaan's record when the women's hockey team plays this weekend at Cornell in the ECAC semifinals. The Tigers take on the host team in the first game Saturday at 1, followed at Lynah Rink by Clarkson and Colgate at 4.

The winners meet Sunday at 2 for the league's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. More than one, and possibly as many as three, of the four teams will be playing next weekend, when the national championships kick off.

The Clarkson-Colgate game, by the way, matches the other two finalists for Player of the Year, as Clarkson's Loren Gabel, last year's winner, and Colgate's Jessie Eldgridge square off. Gabel is second in the country in points scored with 66, trailing only her teammate Elizabeth Giguère, who has 68.

Princeton is 1-0-1 against Cornell this year, including a 5-0 win at Lynah back on Jan. 11. Princeton also looked very sharp in its sweep of St. Lawrence last weekend.

Cornell is 14-2-1 since that loss to Princeton, though one of those two losses came last weekend, when the Big Red was pushed to the limit by RPI before winning that series 2-1. The Big Red needed OT in the first game in a 2-1 win and then lost 2-0 in Game 2 before winning the last game 6-1.

Also, if you're into wild stats, guess what shots were in Game 1? How about Cornell 65, RPI 7. And in Game 2? How about 49-10. Through two games, that meant shots were 114-17 and yet goals were 3-2 the other way, and that also meant that RPI goalie Lovisa Selander had made 112 saves.

If her name is familiar, she was the one who made 57 saves in a 2-1 win over the Tigers at Baker Rink two weeks ago. 

Shots in Game 3, by the way, were 61-8, which meant that Selander made 167 saves in three games. Can a player who didn't reach the final four of the league tournament be the tournament MVP?

The men begin defense of their ECAC tournament championship of a year ago when they head to Brown for a best-of-three series tomorrow night, Saturday night and if necessary Sunday night. If you're up there, face-off is 7 for the first two and then would be 5 for Sunday if a Game 3 happens.

Princeton finished ninth in the regular season and will take on the eighth-seeded Bears. There is no team in the league dying to play the Tigers right now, not after what they did last year in the postseason and not with all that playoff experience still on the team. In fact, Princeton will be returning to the same rink where six days earlier the Tigers defeated Brown 5-1 in the regular season finale, concluding a weekend sweep that started with a 3-2 win at Yale.

Other than being on the road for the first weekend, Princeton isn't in that different of a spot than a year ago. TB has sensed all year that the Tigers were biding their time, waiting to peak at the right time. 

This is the right time.

It's the right time for both hockey teams, who both are playing for huge stakes this weekend. Both want to keep playing next weekend, when the stakes will be even higher.