Well,  I hope the Clarkson/Maine rule is invoked next year.   With
virtually nothing to play for,  those two teams looked like they were
playing for nothing last night.:-(
 
        The Tuthill's have a love/hate relationship with cable TV (at least
Dorothy and I do since we feel it has adverse affects on life styles),  but
we had to get it re-connected (for about the tenth time) for last night's
activities.   Imagine my pleasant surprise to find both tournaments on
live when I arrived home early from work!   In Hartford,  NESN had the
Prime feed for HE,  and Sportschannel had the Empire Sports feed for the
ECAC.
 
        NESN's broadcast was really slick.   I was prepared for a horrible
broadcast by Empire,  but it wasn't.   But neither was it good.   No crowd
noise.   Only remote interviews during intermissions,  and a color
announcer who didn't know the difference between Clarkson and Colgate
while speaking with a French Canadian accent.   (Is Empire's primary
market *Canada*?)   In any event,  I still feel very lucky to have seen
all the games live.
        One bit of culture shock,  not having seen much D-1 lately (about
two dozen D-3 games in the last 2 years):  they actually called charging
in the Maine game.   In D-3,  charging has all but disappeared.   Running
an opponent from accross the ice is commonplace in D-3,  at least in the ECAC
East.   Likewise,  I was very surprised at the amount of interference and
stick holding that *was* allowed.
 
        One final question:  why on earth did Tech allow itself to get into
that type of game with Princeton???   As the home team with the last change,
at very least they should have been able to dictate the style of play.
Very disappointing.
 
        -- Dick Tuthill
 
P.S.   I'm not sure if this will get out ungarbeled.   In re-reading it,
looks like the editor hacked out some of my comments about Prime.
I will post a correction tomorrow if that's the case.