Arthur Mintz writes:
>>One of the Maine old-timers in the stands
>>near me remarked "This is the worst Maine team in ten years!!!"
>
>If you're evaluating Maine based on
>this game, take into account that they played the day before in Minnesota
>and had to fly from Minneapolis to Portland the day of the game.
 
Yes, the Globe article on the game said that Maine had to get up at
5:00 am in Minneapolis, fly to Boston, then bus a couple of hours to
Portland to play this game.  So even though WHRB kept reminding us
that this was "really a home game for Maine, not a neutral site game",
Maine took the much longer and harder route to get there.
 
However, since Harvard was missing several key players and hadn't
played for a couple of weeks, I'm sure Tomassoni still considered it
good that his team hung in there and got the win.  It wasn't quite as
big a game as it originally looked to be (potentially between the best
teams in each conference).  Maine certainly appears to be much closer
to the team I thought they'd be at this point than they were earlier
(losing Kariya playing a big part in that).  The inexperience seems to
be resulting in some inconsistent play throughout the lineup.  But
Mike Latendresse, who I've said is one of the most underrated players
in HE, seems to be flourishing and coming into his own.
 
At any rate, I did not expect Maine to only lose to Harvard by a goal.
I was looking for more of a 4 or 5-2 Harvard win.
 
On the quote from the Maine fan above: worst Maine team in the last ten
years?  I don't think this team is anywhere near 1984-85 or 85-86.  It
was only 8 years ago that Maine lost 16-2 at Minnesota.  I will
concede that having seen Maine since the 86-87 season, I don't think
this team is as good as any of those since, but again, look at the
vast amount of inexperience and also of talent lost.  Walsh has not
had to contend with this happening before - not on this scale, anyway.
---                                                                 ---
Mike Machnik                                          [log in to unmask]
Cabletron Systems, Inc.                                  *HMM* 11/13/93
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