Editor's note: Jerry York is the head coach at Boston College, which recently faced both New Hampshire and Cornell.

Style of play
Both teams play the left-wing lock forecheck, which creates some disturbances offensively but most importantly keeps three guys back. Both create a lot of offense from their forecheck and still stay in good defensive posture.

	Stats Class
	April 10 ESPN2 Noon ET
	Record	27-7-6	30-4-1
	Last 10	8-0-2	10-0-0
	Road/Neutral	11-4-5	15-4-1
	Goals/Game	3.79	3.76
	GAA	2.29	1.30
	Power Play	.232 (36-155)	.227 (34-150)
	Penalty Kill	.867 (22-165)	.905 (13-137)

Strengths
New Hampshire has a quick-strike offense, but they generally keep three guys back and for the left-wing lock. New Hampshire will be difficult to beat. Overall, they skate very well as a club, are very well balanced offensively and defensively and they have a strong goaltender.

Cornell is a team that will cycle the puck a bit more and try to keep pucks alive along the wall longer than New Hampshire will. And they are very good defensively.

Plan of attack
If New Hampshire is more of quick-strike offense, then Cornell takes more of a biding time, wear-you-down approach. Their objective is to keep pucks on the boards, keep cycling pucks and try to get body position and strength involved. Their offensive-zone play reminds me a lot of the Lake Superior State teams of the early '90s.

Standout players
With New Hampshire, I think you need to start in goal and work your way out. Mike Ayers has been outstanding, very consistent. He's played about every period of play that New Hampshire had this year. He certainly is a strength for them.

I like their defense. Garrett Stafford is the one player that can create an awful lot of offense. But most of the others just play steady defense in front of the goaltender. They handle rushes well and they make that first pass, so they're more defensive-type defensemen with the exception of Stafford.

They've continued to be a very high-strike, quick offense. This year, Lanny Gare, Colin Hemingway, Sean Collins and Steve Saviano have really been key players. Gare is one of the reasons they've had such success this year. If he doesn't play, it's certainly going to hurt New Hampshire's bid to win a national title.

Cornell, with David LeNeveu, is very similar to New Hampshire in that both have very good goaltenders. Both coaches have the realization that going into the game that they're strong in goal because that's been proven night in and night out during the course of the season.

The Doug Murray factor on defense gives Cornell a real offensive weapon from the point. He shoots the puck extremely hard. They also have another group of players that blend in and play good, solid defense.

Coaches' preparation
I don't expect a lot of power-play situations so the offensive-zone pressure has to create scoring chances. Offensive-zone pressure is going to be important because you're going to have to score 5-on-5. It's not going to be a race to four goals. I think three goals would probably be the objective and might be enough to win if you play the good defense that got you there.