Re: UNH At The Starting Gate....
Kudos to Dartmouth. They matched UNH goal-for-goal in a "last team who scores, wins" kind of game. In an 8-day period, Dartmouth barely lost to #1 Yale 2-1 and beat #4 UNH 5-4. Very impressive.
Up until 18:25 of the first period, I thought UNH played very well and were comfortably dominating the game. Their passes were crisp and accurate, they were getting quality shots on goal, and Dartmouth looked overmatched. Then came a needless tripping penalty on Kessel - he tripped the Dartmouth guy just outside the UNH blueline in the neutral zone, right in front of the UNH bench. The Dartmouth player was not leading a rush and was in a relatively harmless position. 30 seconds later, Dartmouth scores a powerplay goal to make it 1-1 and you could almost see them saying "Hey, we can score on these guys - let's go after 'em."
On the second Dartmouth goal, Henrion got a nice assist - passing from behind the UNH net to a Dartmouth player in the faceoff circle. Give credit to Henrion though - he redeemed himself with 2 goals of his own.
I thought both DiGirolamo and Mello played average games. Neither made many spectacular saves and both allowed in some medium-quality chances.
Another juggling of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th lines. Burke joined Borisenok and Moses on the 2nd line. Silengo centered Henrion and Goumas and Block centered Sorkin on the left wing and Speelman on the right wing. It's still early enough in the season to be juggling lines but this current configuration has it's drawbacks. The biggest is that replacing Speelman with Burke completely changes the character of the Borisnok-Moses line. With Speelman on their left wing, they have possibly the three best forecheckers on the team who can also fly up and down the ice. Plug Burke in for Speelman and the line's speed goes down through center ice and in the offensive zone. I know Burke is a very talented player who deserves to be on one of the top lines but I think he matches up better with tough, hardnosed forwards who like to bang people in the offensive zone (e.g., Block, McCarey, even Henrion). The other drawback is Speelman's on-ice time is diminished when he's on the 4th line and he plays the awkward left-hand shot on the right wing position.
My guess is there will be ample comments about the officiating in the post-game interviews. They did make a couple of errors which could have cost UNH. The first was midway through the second period (with the score tied at 2-2) when a Dartmouth player crosschecked Goumas in the middle of his back, slamming him into the boards. The ref called matching penalties claiming that Goumas "embellished." It looked to me like Goumas's head snapped backward when he hit the boards - a move which is hard to fake. The second costly officiating error came with a little over a minute left in the game. A UNH forward (I forget who) was rushing the puck across the redline and was clearly tripped. No call. Another controversial call was that the refs refused to review the final Dartmouth goal, despite Coach Umile's screaming appeals. The replay on the jumbotron appeared to show that the goal was good.
In a move which I hope Gibber caught on film, Umile walked across the ice, after shaking Gaudet's hand, in the direction of the two referees who were hold up in the far corner of the rink. Umile yelled at them while vigorously pointing his finger at them. He stopped his pursuit when he reached the line of players shaking hands at mid-ice. All-in-all, I'd say the crowd got it's money's worth.
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