Team Notes: Dartmouth Opens League Play Against Quinnipiac and Princeton

HANOVER, N.H. - This weekend will mark a scheduling oddity for the Dartmouth men's hockey team as Quinnipiac and Princeton come to Hanover for Friday and Saturday night tilts.

The two teams will play a Tuesday night game in Princeton to start the week as the Bobcats had a slight respite this past weekend after beginning the season with eight games in three weeks. The Tigers, on the other hand, began their 2011-12 campaign in Hanover this weekend as part of the Ivy Shootout.

So when Quinnipiac steps on the ice Friday night at Thompson Arena, it will have played more than four times as many games as its opponent that night in the Big Green. Princeton will also have a slight advantage in games played due to the Tuesday home game with the Bobcats and a Friday night game in Cambridge to open Harvard's season.

But with all of those scheduling quirks coming into play this weekend, Dartmouth's mix of youth and veteran leaderships will look to overcome any perceived shortcoming due to lacking game experience.

The Big Green's season started on a strong note as junior Dustin Walsh (Shannonville, Ontario) and freshman Tyler Sikura (Aurora, Ontario) each had two-point efforts against Brown Friday night in a 2-1 victory. Their linemate, freshman Brandon McNally (Saugus, Mass.), also had a helper in the game, picking up the assist on Sikura's goal with 3:04 left in the third, which proved to be the winner.

The win not only was the first of the season, but also made Bob Gaudet the 14th active head coach with 300-career victories. Interestingly enough, the milestone win came against the team that he began his head-coaching career with and earned nearly a third of those victories.

Senior James Mello (Rehoboth, Mass.) backstopped the team to the win against the Bears, turning aside 23 shots in the process. Mello was on his game the following night as he made 23 saves against No. 9 Yale. But even his solid performance wasn't enough to overcome the timely scoring of the Bulldogs, falling 2-1.

What was thought to be a strength in the preseason was solidified as reality when another freshman found the back of the net Saturday night. Eric Neiley (Foxboro, Mass.) scored his first collegiate goal midway through the second period against Yale, going high glove to tie the game.

After Dartmouth's first-year players racked up a majority of the points against Western Ontario and Norwich, they continued the trend to start the regular season as two of the three goals on the weekend came from freshmen forwards making their college debuts.

Junior captain Mike Keenan (South Weymouth, Mass.) also started his season off on the right foot as he scored the team's first goal of 2011-12 early in the first against the Bears Friday.

With the freshmen class scoring big goals, the veterans continuing their solid play and the defense contributing at both ends of the ice in the first two games, fans should expect to see much of the same when the Big Green's second weekend of play gets underway Friday night against the Bobcats.

GAME NOTES

SCOUTING QUINNIPIAC
- The Bobcats have played nine games this season already (7-2-0) and have won the only ECAC Hockey game played to this point (1-0-0) Tuesday against Princeton.
- Boston College is the only other team in the nation to play nine games to this point, doing so Wednesday night against Boston University.
- Junior Jeremy Langlois is amongst the nation's top point producers with 14 in nine games. He ranks 17th in the country with 1.56 points per game. His eight goals in nine games also has him 11th in goals per game (0.89).
- No other player has more power-play goals this season than Langlois' five.
- Senior goaltender Dan Clarke has emerged as the Bobcats' No. 1 with a 5-1-0 record and goals-against average of 1.50 in eight appearances.
- Twins Connor and Kellen Jones have combined for 21 points. Connor ranks second on the team with 12 points and has a team-best nine assists. Kellen is second on the team with four goals and has nine points total.
- Freshman Matthew Peca, a Tampa Bay Lightning draft choice, has been named the recipient of the last two ECAC Hockey Rookie of the Week honors and was recently named the league's Rookie of the Month for October.
- Defenseman Loren Barron has a team- and league-leading +13 rating this season. The Bobcats have the top seven players and eight of the top 10 in the category.
- Quinnipiac won the first ECAC Hockey game played this season, 5-2, Tuesday night at Hobey Baker Rink against Princeton, its first win at Princeton since 2007.
- With 40 goals scored this season, the Bobcats rank fourth in the nation offensively (4.44). Having allowed just 18 goals in the nine games, the team is tied for 11th in team defense (2.00).

SCOUTING PRINCETON
- The Tigers may have started the season late, but they jumped right into 2011-12 with three games in the first five days. Princeton was one of the three other teams in Hanover to start the season at the Ivy Shootout this past weekend.
- In the two games played at Thompson, Princeton was 0-1-1. The team started the season with a surprising 2-2 tie against No. 9 Yale in a game that saw all four goals scored in the second period. It followed with a 3-2 loss to Brown Saturday afternoon.
- First-year head coach Bob Prier is still looking for his first win after another loss Tuesday night to Quinnipiac in his home debut.
- Five players have two points thus far, but only Michael Sdao, an Ottawa draft pick, has two goals with both coming in Hanover over the weekend.
- Juniors Will McDonald and Eric Meland picked up the first goals of their seasons in Tuesday's loss to the Bobcats.

300
Dartmouth head coach Bob Gaudet became the 14th active coach to reach the 300-career win mark in Friday's season opener against Brown. Gaudet's first-career win came behind the Brown bench against Dartmouth in his first season with the team, a season that saw the Bears post a 1-25 record in 1988-89. This weekend's milestone victory also came against former player and assistant coach Brendan Whittet who played for Gaudet at Brown from 1990-94 and served as an assistant under Gaudet at Dartmouth for 11 seasons from 1998-2009.

AGAINST THE ECAC
The Big Green are 5-9 in ECAC Hockey openers under Gaudet. Dartmouth has lost its last three conference openers, dating back to the 2008-09 season. The last time the Big Green won its ECAC opener was a 2-1 victory at St. Lawrence on Nov. 2, 2007.

ECAC MARKS
Since the start of the 1997-98 season (Gaudet's first with the team), Dartmouth has gone 139-129-39 against ECAC Hockey opponents. Twice the team has posted 14-win seasons in league play as the Big Green did so in the 2004-05 (14-8-0) and 2005-06 (14-6-2) campaigns.

THE CAPTAIN GETS IT ROLLING
Junior captain Mike Keenan (South Weymouth, Mass.) opened the Dartmouth season with a goal against Brown 4:09 into the first period. Keenan's shot from the point found its way through the crowd in front of the net for the team's first marker of 2011-12. Keenan became the second defenseman in as many years to score the Big Green's first goal of the season as Evan Stephens picked up the first of 2010-11 just 43 seconds into the second period against Princeton.

2-1 TO START
Dartmouth defeated Brown, 2-1, to start the season, marking the second straight year that the Big Green have opened the year with a 2-1 win in the Ivy Shootout. The team also opened the 2010-11 campaign by the same score against Princeton.

TWO-POINT DEBUT
Freshman Tyler Sikura (Aurora, Ontario) started his Dartmouth career with a two-point night against Brown. Sikura was credited with an assist on Keenan's season-opening tally, and followed with the game winner with 3:04 left in the third to break the 1-1 tie. The last time a Dartmouth player had a multi-point game in the season opener was when J.T. Wyman did it against Vermont on Oct. 28, 2007, exactly four years before Sikura.

WALSH WORKS
Sikura's game winner was the result of a pretty feed along the boards from junior Dustin Walsh (Shannonville, Ontario). The assist was the second of the game for the forward, who also had a helper on Keenan's in the first. Walsh and Sikura's two-point efforts marked the first time since Oct. 27, 2006 that two Dartmouth players had multiple-point games in a season opener when Tanner Glass (0-3-3) and David Jones (1-2-3) did so against Harvard.

STAYING POWER
The line of Walsh, Sikura and freshman Brandon McNally (Saugus, Mass.) produced five points on opening night. McNally picked up his first collegiate point with an assist on the Sikura goal. With instant chemistry, the line remained together against Yale. The only other line to remain untouched for both games consisted of junior Alex Goodship (Blackfalds, Alberta) and seniors Paul Lee (Garden City, N.Y.) and Nick Walsh (Shannonville, Ontario).

DEFENSIVE DEBUTS
Two Dartmouth defensemen made their debuts with the team this past weekend. Dan Nycholat (Calgary, Alberta) suited up for both contests after sitting out last season due to NCAA rules following his transfer from Northeastern. Freshman Rick Pinkston (Trenton, Mich.) made his collegiate debut Saturday night against Yale and was paired with Nycholat on the blueline. Pinkston had two blocks against the Elis, while Nycholat finished the weekend with five blocks, two shots and four penalty minutes.

MELLO'S MARVELS
- Senior goalie James Mello (Rehoboth, Mass.) played all but 1:10 in goal this weekend. The Big Green goaltender stopped 24 Brown shots in picking up his first win of the season Friday and followed up with 23 saves against Yale Saturday. Mello stopped a weekend-high 12 Bulldog shots in the second period, but Yale managed to sneak two by him in the frame, the only two of the game.
- Mello's current .923 career save percentage ranks No. 1 in program history.

SPECIAL TEAMS
Dartmouth is the only team in the country without a power-play goal in 2011-12. In just one weekend of play, the Big Green were 0-for-9 with the man-advantage, including 0-for-6 to start the season against Brown. On the flipside of the first-week woes of the power-play unit, the Big Green penalty killers were 8-for-9, including killing off all six Brown power-play opportunities. The team's 88.9% success rate a man down ranks ninth nationally.

SCORING DEFENSE
Only one team has allowed fewer goals per game this season than Dartmouth's 1.50. Merrimack has yielded just seven tallies in its first six games for an average of 1.17 per contest. Yale and the Big Green each allowed just three in the opening weekend of play at Thompson to tie for second. The Warriors are a possible opponent for Dartmouth this season as the two could meet on the second day of the Ledyard National Bank Classic on New Year's Eve.