Providence may have played its last game this season after being swept by BU in their Hockey East quarterfinal series.

Denver also struggled on the road with a pair of losses at No. 1 Colorado College.

Unfortunately for Harvard, the season did not end this weekend, and there are still two more weeks of hockey to be played before the NCAA tournament begins.

“Obviously we keep an eye on the PWR rankings because they’re important,” Grumet-Morris said. “The problem with the USCHO pairwise rankings is that they’re just an update. We don’t really know how it’s all going to play out until the conference tournaments are over. While you can follow it, and some of us do, it’s incomplete until the season’s over.”

Although nothing will be settled until the NCAA makes the official announcement and factors in its yet undisclosed “quality wins” bonus, Harvard fans would be well advised to keep their eyes on the WCHA quarterfinal series between Denver and No. 11 North Dakota.

If North Dakota can knock the Pioneers out of the playoffs and the Crimson advances to the ECAC semifinals, Harvard will take a giant leap towards solidifying its claim for an at-large bid.

Obviously the Crimson can put all this speculation and scoreboard watching to rest if it can win the ECAC tournament and earn one of six automatic bids to the 16-team NCAA tournament.

Harvard starts the ECAC playoffs this Friday at home against Vermont and will likely face Cornell in the ECAC finals in Albany, N.Y. on Mar. 22.

—Staff writer Timothy Jackson can be reached at jackson2@fas.harvard.edu.