Dartmouth Men's Hockey Picked Sixth in Both Preseason Polls

ALBANY, N.Y. - The Dartmouth men's hockey team was chosen to finish in sixth place in both the 2010-11 ECAC Hockey coaches and media preseason polls. The Big Green finished last season in a tie for ninth place with a 10-19-3 overall record, 7-12-3 in the league. Senior defenseman Evan Stephens (Bessemer, Mich.) was named to the coaches Preseason All-League team for the second year in a row.

Stephens finished last year as the Big Green's highest scoring defenseman with 20 points. He missed just one game and finished fifth on the team in scoring. Stephens recorded one power play goal, one shorthanded goal and one game winner. He has been a key member of Dartmouth's penalty killing unit since his freshman season.

In 2009-10 the Big Green was picked to finish the season fifth and due to injuries and unforseen circumstances, Dartmouth finished in a tie with Harvard for 9th. Some slight bobbles at the end of the year dropped the Big Green into a tie with the Crimson but head coach Bob Gaudet knows not to put too much stock into preseason prognastications.

"You can't really take the poll and say this is how the season is going to be," Gaudet said. "We have to go out and prove ourselves on the ice and get the wins. We'll play a tough schedule like always and we'll let the chips fall, I know we'll be good, we have a lot of upperclassmen coming back and a very good recruiting class. These guys are hungry and ready to prove themselves."

Yale was unanimous as the top team selected in both polls receiving 25 votes by the media and 11 by the coaches. The Bulldogs finished atop the ECAC Hockey regular-season standings last season for the second consecutive year.

Yale garnered a total of 121 points. The Bulldogs, which led all NCAA Division I teams in scoring offense last season totalling 4.15 G/GM, returns its top
three leading scorers. The next five spots feature the exact same teams in both polls. Cornell (228/92 pts.) was picked second with three total first-place votes. In third was Union College (276/86 pts.) with one vote for the top spot while Rensselaer was picked fourth in the coaches poll (79 pts.) and fifth (211) in the media poll as Colgate (263/69) was the reverse. Dartmouth had 67 points in the coaches poll and 188 points in the media poll.

Harvard (62 pts.) held the no. 7 spot in the coaches poll, followed by Quinnipiac (54 pts.), St. Lawrence (52 pts.), Princeton (43 pts.), Brown (34 pts.) and Clarkson (33 pts). On the media side of things, St. Lawrence was seventh with 172 points, Quinnipiac was eighth with 142 points, Princeton was ninth with 135 points, Harvard was tenth with 120 points, Brown was 11th with 118 points and Clarkson was 12th with 82 points.

The 2010-11 season opens the weekend of October 2 and 3 with three exhibition games. Dartmouth's season begins with an exhibition game against Trois-Rivieres on Oct. 17 and then a scrimmage with Yale on Oct. 24. The Big Green opens up the ECAC Hockey season with a weekend at home against RPI and Union on Nov. 5 and 6.

Schedules