The tourney at UNH is apparently called the "UNH Holiday Tournament", not
the Auld Lang Syne Classic, and the composite will reflect this next time I
update it.  It's still basically the same teams as the ALS - Vermont,
Dartmouth, UNH, and another team which is Northeastern this year.  They
called it the UNH Holiday Tourney on tv and when I looked at the UNH media
guide, they had also called it this.  Anyway...
 
Northeastern (7-6-0) 7, Vermont (6-6-1) 3
Dartmouth (2-7-0) 4, at UNH (6-7-2) 3
 
Vermont and UNH will meet in the consolation, while Northeastern takes on
Dartmouth in the championship.
 
Dartmouth-UNH was shown live on the NH public tv station and I saw most of
the game.  UNH had the edge in shots, but Dartmouth played tight defense
and took advantage of several opportunities.  It was 1-1 after one and 3-3
after two, then Dartmouth scored the winner early in the third and
literally held on for the win, including killing off a 5x3.  It was only
Dartmouth's second win of the year (2-7-0) but a big win for them over
their intrastate rival.  They called it a "major upset" on tv, but I
wouldn't quite call it that; Dartmouth has apparently been playing better
than its record (losing only 6-4 at Harvard before Christmas despite
outshooting the Crimson) and the teams seemed pretty evenly matched,
although UNH has a little more firepower than the Green.  This was only the
second time in the last 9 meetings that Dartmouth had beaten UNH.
 
Another reason I was curious to see the matchup was that Merrimack had
beaten Dartmouth 8-1 early in the season and will play a home-and-home with
UNH Jan 8-9.  What I saw confirmed my belief that Merrimack should be able
to play with UNH.  All of Merrimack's next 12 games are against teams it
can beat, with 10 of those being Hockey East matchups, so we'll see what
happens.  If they're going to escape last place, this will be the time to
do it.
 
BTW, I noticed at the end of the GLI final that PASS will be travelling to
Fairbanks Sunday 1/3 to show Western Michigan-UAF, which I believe will be
the first nationally televised game shown from Fairbanks, so check your tv
schedules.  PASS game time is 7:30 Eastern, I believe, but other cable
networks may show it on tape delay.
---
Mike Machnik    [log in to unmask]   Color Voice of the Merrimack Warriors
(Any opinions expressed above are strictly those of the poster.)    *HMN*