Hapless Dartmouth Challenges Icemen

Worst meets best at Bright Center at 7:30 p.m. tonight as the ECAC doormat Dartmouth men's hockey team faces league-leading Harvard in game two of the Harvard-Dartmouth Challenge.

After a month during which the Crimson battled against ECAC rivals Cornell, Colgate and RPI, tonight's game should be an unfitting anticlimax. The Big Green has dropped 19 straight games to Harvard, dating back to 1981 when Dartmouth was a national powerhouse.

But this year's Dartmouth squad is no powerhouse. Harvard scored five goals in the first six minutes against the Big Green on Nov. 25 en route to an 8-1 blowout victory in Hanover, N.H.

"We're just going to show up and play a hockey game," first-year Dartmouth Coach Ben Smith said. "That's the best we can do."

Unfortunately for Dartmouth, the best it can do is probably not good enough. The Big Green has scored two less goals (14) then Harvard's Mike Vukonich (16-7--23). Freshman Scott Fraser, who broke up a Chuck Hughes shutout in the earlier matchup, leads the squad in scoring with a mere four goals and three assists.

And the Dartmouth defense has yielded nearly six goals per game in netminder Vern Guetens' five previous starts.

"Harvard's got some of the most talented players in the United States and they're really coming together as a great hockey team," Smith said. "Unfortunately, we're not."

Harvard's offense, recently led by the top Donato-Ciavaglia-Vukonich line, is among the fiercest in the ECAC. It was that cold November night in Hanover when Coach Ronn Tomassoni gave birth to the prolific line, which netted six tallies in its debut.

On the defensive end, Tomassoni must be breathing a sigh of relief that tonight's opponent is barely a hockey team. The young Crimson defense continues to be banged up, with freshman Derek Maguire the most recent victim.

Maguire joins junior Kevin Sneddon (shoulder) on the sidelines while junior Greg Hess joins senior Rich Defrietas as a JV callup to replace the injured blue-liners.

Harvard senior Michael Francis will appear between the twines for the first time since Nov. 16, when he made 31 saves in a 4-3 loss to Princeton.

The Crimson--which leads St. Lawrence in the ECAC standings by one point--must win to solidify its top spot in the league heading into its four-game road swing in January. Against the Big Green, it shouldn't be a problem.

"We have no reason at all to sit back in a comfortable position or to think that we can just walk out on the ice and win this hockey game," Harvard Captain Ted Donato said. "We're approaching it as a very important game.