Skaters to face Dartmouth, Harvard

Thousands of people all over the United States will be leaning back in their chairs on Thursday evening, wishing they hadn't had that last forkful of mashed potatoes and wondering how they'll ever squeeze in the pie that's just coming out of the oven. When packing in the turkey, gravy, stuffing and squash is a sacred part of nearly every traditional Thanksgiving table, most people worry about the amount of exercise they'll need to burn off what they so joyously consumed.

But that won't be a problem for the men's hockey team (1-5-0 Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference Hockey League, 1-6-1 overall). For the players who do get to go home for Turkey Day, the big meal will be essential preparation for the weekend ahead, as the Tigers will need all their strength when they head north and face off against Dartmouth on Friday and Harvard on Saturday.

Princeton is looking for a strong rebound after last weekend's tough losses to Cornell and Colgate. Both of last weekend's games showed breakdowns in the team's core strengths that seemed solid at the outset of the season.

The games found the Tigers struggling to keep up with the larger and quicker Cornell and Colgate teams, and while the close scores kept it exciting for the fans, that excitement wasn't shared by the Princeton players. Success this weekend will depend on repairs in strategy and teamwork, which are easily achievable.

Dartmouth will be the bigger hurdle of the weekend, as the Orange and Black will have to work against a Big Green squad with a 5-3 overall record on its home ice. Princeton's greatest barrier between victory and defeat, will likely be Dartmouth's veteran goaltender Mike Devine, who maintains an impressive .921 save percentage. With a goal-shot percentage of .084, the Tigers will have to look for creative ways to get more shots and pound the net, forcing Devine to make uncharacteristic errors.

Dartmouth also has a high-octance scoring attack, with leading goal-scorers forwards Nick Johnson and David Jones already charting 15 and 17 goals this season respectively. Yet the Big Green plays a hard-hitting game, with seven penalties per game on average, and it will be up to Princeton to find a way around the size difference, as it has done before, and maneuver itself into a position for strategic goalscoring.

Princeton's best strategy against Harvard will be to keep itself out of the box and encourage the Crimson to get into it. While physical intensity got in the Tigers' way against Colgate, Princeton won't have an obvious size disadvantage against the Crimson, and will need to promote their physical game in order to slow down Harvard's agile forward lines.

Harvard has solidly executed its power play all season, leading the ECACHL with 10 power play goals. Cutting down on the Crimson extra-man opportunities will be an area of focus for the Tigers. Luckily, staying out of the box has generally been a strength of Princeton's, as it maintains one of the lower penalty minute accumulations in the Ivy League with only 59 to date.

The main issue will be forcing Harvard into a physical game, as the Crimson also boasts low penalty minutes — only 61 penalties this season — and tend to rely heavily on smaller, quicker forwards to move the puck rather than forcing the puck up the center of the neutral zone, a game plan favored by bigger team such as Colgate.

Princeton has a strong forward match-up with senior forward Darrell Powe and the team's goal leader, sophomore forward Lee Jubinville, against Harvard's Ryan Maki and Dylan Reese, who together have scored eight goals. The Tigers will need to find a way around Reese and Maki, looking to their play-making skills to counteract Harvard's strong reliance on their top goal-scorers.

Overall, the Tigers have the opportunity to make this weekend a road trip to be thankful for. It gives them the opportunity to bounce back from a particularly brutal weekend, both physically and mentally, last week and come forward against some of the Ivy's toughest competition. With a few tweaks to last weekend's holdups, Princeton could double its number of ECACHL wins and find a confidence boost it has been sorely lacking of late. Speed, endurance and hard work are all there for the Tiger squad; they just seem to still miss their groove. Don't shy away from that last piece of pie boys, you're going to need every bit of energy this weekend.