Harvard/Dartmouth

After listening to the Harvard/Dartmouth game in its entirety, and the Harvard/UVM 1st period, these are some conclusions I have come up with.

1. The Harvard play-by-play kid is really bad. It's not that he's clueless-bad, but he was talking so fast that he just kept saying the wrong thing or garbling his words. Kinda annoying. And the only ECAC updates he gave were end-of-first-period scores, which kinda left me hanging.

2. Vermont has nowhere to go but up. There were some good things said about their goalie, Russell, however. The radio guy seemed kind of upset/surprised that Harvard was only up by one or two goals at the end of the first period (can't remember), attributing it to lack of capitalizing on offensive opportunites.

3. It sounded like Dartmouth was nowhere near as good as they were last year this early in the season, but it sounded like their forecheck was pretty good, and they seem to be one of the faster teams in the league.

4. Harvard is definitely a big momentum team. Once they scored on Dartmouth, they scored the next two goals within like 5 minutes of each other. The coach echoed that sentiment during his first intermission interview. Once they get on the board, they have a lot more jump in their skating. That might be a good thing against teams like us, because they probably won't score much.

5. Both Dartmouth and Harvard have shaky defenses, but the game was not as high-scoring as I would have expected.

6. They were talking to a person affiliated with one of the NHL teams during the first intermission Friday night. He complimented Dartmouth on their forechecking and Harvard on their ability to beat the other players to the puck, which was surprising considering Dartmouth seemed faster in the corners. I think Harvard's puck handling skills were better, though. In any event, it didn't seem like any of the three were much of a match for us, if we play like we are expected to.

7. Dom Moore is the best player on the ice for Harvard (no surprise there.)

I suppose we shall see on Saturday. I am going up to visit my former co-worker who went to U. Maine and now is in graduate school at Dartmouth. I am trying to convince him to go to the game. I told him it's about time he went to a real college hockey game. He doesn't seem too convinced yet.

Yes I know I've been quiet since seeing many of you at last year's East Regionals, but given the game coming up on Sat., though I should throw my $.02 in...

Dartmouth's biggest problem thus far has been mediocre goaltending. a 4.00 GAA and .87% save percentage isn't going to cut it. The D-men are fine, with Byrne and Summerfelt leading an experienced corps. Of course throw all this out the window when you guys come to play. Boucher seems to have your number for some reason.

Offense isn't outstanding except on the PP when Stempniak, Byrne, and Summerfelt are all out there at once. We're still breaking in a large freshman crop at forward, and while the potential is there the growing pains are as well.

Sadly I won't be at Thompson this weekend, as I'm down in the college hockey void known as NYC for the fall. But it's looking more likely that I'll make it to the Dartmouth-Cornell game in Ithaca.

But I learned my lesson last year, until the streak ends, I gotta go with my team on Saturday. Boucher has his one outstanding game of the year, and the Green win 2-1.

Ben - if you can take MetroNorth to New Haven or get to Meriden some other way, we'll have room in the car if we decide to drive to the game on Saturday.

I have to agree with Ben on Boucher - he has our number. I'm very interested to see if D-mouth plays him against us, though, as he's been sharing his time in the net this season. Predictions?