It's an interesting thought, but I have seen all four of the HE SO games - 3 on tv, and I was at PC-Merrimack - and I didn't see anything different between last year and this in terms of teams playing for the tie. That is, I noticed road teams (Maine, PC, etc.) playing for the tie, and home teams (BU, Merrimack, etc.) turning it on to try to win. That's not so unusual. I don't think the teams are playing for a SO so much as they are trying desperately to hold on and be guaranteed at least 2 points out of the game. Just like before (except that before the tie was worth 1 point). Next question would be, then does the SO really get you anything other than exciting the fans, since it doesn't seem to be having an effect on how many games end in ties? We'll have to see if more teams go for the win now that everyone knows a win is worth 5. I think some teams still didn't know that this weekend. Talking to Mark Cornforth (Merrimack captain) after Saturday's game, he did a doubletake when I said something about picking up 8 points this weekend, and I ended up explaining the change to him. That means he didn't know it in the course of Friday's game (a shootout) either. BTW, on Cornforth...if you read my post about the Merrimack fans this weekend, I mentioned there that Cornforth had an involvement in attracting fans to the game. I found out that what he did was to get approval to send a campus-wide audix (voice mail) message to everyone's mailbox, telling them about the event being put on by the Program Board and asking people to come down and support the team. The result was perhaps the best home crowd at Merrimack in over 5 years (more people have shown up for Maine, but they were Maine fans :-)). It backed my theory that a big reason why students weren't coming to the games was because they simply didn't know about them. We'll see what happens the rest of the season. --- --- Mike Machnik [log in to unmask] Cabletron Systems, Inc. *HMM* 11/13/93