Forget saving the best for last; face-off time for Cornell hockey fans' favorite game of the season is 7 p.m. Saturday. The No. 5 men's hockey team has a 2009-10 schedule littered with tough games against big-name hockey programs like Boston University and North Dakota, but those will be largely forgotten when Harvard takes the ice at Lynah Rink in the 131st installment of the rivalry.

Every season is a rollercoaster ride, and this one starts with a jolt. The last time Harvard came to town this early in the year was a Nov. 5, 2003, matchup that Cornell won, 2-0. Since then, Harvard holds a 7-4 edge in the series. Last season, Cornell took the game at Lynah, 2-1, behind two goals from Riley Nash. Harvard won its own home game later in the season, 4-2. Both teams won their only game of the season so far; Harvard opened ECAC Hockey play with a 5-3 win over Dartmouth, and Niagara took Cornell to overtime before ultimately falling, 3-2.

The matchup reads like the cast of a stage melodrama. Harvard has a hotshot rookie: Louis Leblanc, a Quebec native taken by the Montreal Canadiens with the 18th overall NHL draft pick. As a foil, Cornell has Riley Nash, the junior center and 21st overall draft pick in 2007 who plays a similar game to Leblanc. Both show good touch and evasiveness with the puck, and they score their goals by playing physical hockey to get good position close to the net.

"It's difficult for freshmen to come in," Schafer said. "[Leblanc will] have impact, no question, he's a good player. But it's the same thing as when Riley came in as a freshman, and he's a much different player now as a junior."

Leblanc might not blow opponents away, but he wasted little time in notching his first collegiate goal and assist in Harvard's season-opening 5-3 win over Dartmouth on Oct. 30.

Harvard also has an enigmatic goalie returning to the crease after a one-year absence for personal reasons: junior Kyle Richter held the Red to one goal in both of the teams' matchups in 2007-08. That season, he won the Dryden Award for best goalie in ECAC Hockey with a 1.82 goals-against average and .935 save percentage in league play. The two Cornell skaters to score on Richter? Seniors Blake Gallagher and Colin Greening.

"[Richter] had that fantastic year my sophomore year," Greening said. "[Harvard is] always going to be good, they've always been good. They have a number of big-name players coming back so it'll be nice to see how they play and I'm sure they'll play very well."

Including Leblanc, Harvard has an eight-person freshman class that ranked best in ECAC Hockey and fifth in the nation, according to Inside College Hockey. Alex Fallstrom, a 6-2 forward out of Stockholm, Sweden, was picked in the fourth round of the NHL draft. Cornell will counter with freshmen defensemen Nick D'Agostino and Braden Birch. Both are big, mobile defensemen; Birch was a sixth-round NHL draft pick and D'Agostino went in the seventh round. D'Agostino scored two goals in the Red's 7-0 exhibition win over Windsor on Oct. 23 and registered an assist against Niagara.

"Even before I got here, I talked to the seniors about it, and everybody knows that Cornell-Harvard is a pretty big game," D'Agostino said. "It's natural to have some jitters before that game but you just want to stay as calm as possible."

"Every game against them is huge," Nash said. "Right now, we want to get out of the gates and get some wins under our belt, get some momentum going."