Dartmouth had won 10 straight at Thompson Arena dating back to last year’s playoffs heading into last weekend’s game against travel partner Vermont. They’ve now lost 2 in a row, falling to Union College 2-0 tonight in a game which was the exact opposite of everything Dartmouth fans have come to expect to see this year, namely a high powered offense with little defense.
Dartmouth netminder Nick Boucher turned in perhaps his strongest outing of the year stopping 30 of 32 shots, but the offense failed to give him any goal support. Again like last week, Dartmouth had some chances from the low slot in the third and were robbed by the opposing goalie. Dartmouth was also hurt by a plethora of penalties in the 1st period. Though they survived the period only trailing by a goal, and killed off 1:45 of a 5v3 in the process, it visibly sapped their energy and they were running on fumes by the end of the game.
The officiating tonight was mediocre at best. The linesmen had a very poor night, one of the only times in memory where the linesmen got booed more than the referee. And the ref, while not calling a bad game per se, called one that definitely favored Union. After Union went up 1-0, they went into a clutch-and-grab neutral zone trap, and the ref was letting most of the stuff away from the puck go without a call.
Dartmouth (9-8-1, 5-6-0) has now lost 4 straight ECAC games and are winless since the turn of the calendar at 0-4-1. They return to action tomorrow night against RPI at 7 PM before starting a 4-game road trip next weekend.
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