HANOVER, N. H. Christmas tree are everywhere here.
So the Harvard men's hockey team decided to form a tree of their own last night in Dartmouth's Rupert Thompson Arena. The Crimson hung to little red lights all over Big Green netminder felt Bower.
When 11-1 slaughter of Dartmouth's the Crimson upped its record to 8 0 1 of ECAC remained the only unbeaten seen in major college hockey and retained sole possession of the first place in the ECAC.
Thirteen icemen shared the Bower trimming chores by contribution at least a point the way was defenseman Mark Benning who had two goals and three assists.
Scott Fusco's point effort jumped him into tenth place on the Crimson all time scoring list with 11 career points.
"It'll [the career scoring mark] probably mean more later." Fusco said after the game. "It's a nice thing to look back on."
The Big Green's Jelf Lenoard spoiled Harvard goalie Grant Blair's bid for his seventh career shutout with just 3:32 left to play, when Leonard's foot shot caromed off the netminder's wrist into the net.
The story of the Harvard offense was once again the power play which converted on tour of its five first period opportunities to the salt the contest away before the rink crew had an opportunity to turn off the Zamboni.
The extra-man unit went four for seven on the evening and upped its efficency for the season to a staggering 45 percent.
Dartmouth's Paul O'Hern slamed Fusco into the boards and was whistled for cross checking just 14 seconds into the game. Less than a minute later Lane and MacDonald slammed home a rebound.
After the score Dartmouth Coach Brain Mason ranked starting netminder Jay Samek, who had recorded a single save.
Samek was lucky His replacement Bower had to endure 10 Crimson scores in the next 59 minutes.
Before three and a half minute of the period had expired MacDonald struck again on the power play for another Crimson score and the freshman's eight goal.
After a Fusco score Tim Smith hit the lamp at 17:49 of the first stanza extending his goal scoring streak to nine games.
The Crimson's winning streak continued as the icemen are now off to the best start ever in the Bill Cleary era. The best start in Harvard history was 13-0 in 1936-37.
Coach Cleary was pleased with the game primarily because the injury plagued icemen escaped without adding to their wounded list.
Next for the Crimson is an important out of conference show down with Boston College Friday in Chestnut Hill and Cleary wants to be a close to full strength as possible for the match up.
The Dartmouth contest saw the return of Crimson defenseman Randy Taylor who suffered a separated shoulder two weeks ago at Western Ontario.
The blue liner made his presence felt with a goal and three assists.
After Fusco and Benning tallied in the second period, the rest of the the Crimson started hitting the twine something relatively new for the second third and fourth liners.
Peter Chiarelli, Peter Follows and Steve Armstrong each picked up goals.
"It was good to see the other kids score goals," Cleary said.
Cleary helped them out by holding the first line out for most of the last period and putting his fourth line out on the power play.
Fusco for one was glad to be on the bench for most of the final 20.
"After the second period I hoped they'd cancel the third," he said. "They were just running at us."
As they fell behind the hosts seemed to concentrate more on dismembering their guests than on handling the puck.
Nonetheless Fusco thought the Crimson had rebounded well from last weekend's trip to Cornell and Colgate, which yielded a tie and an overtime victory.
"We played well tonight, I don't think we played well last weekend," he said.
Cleary was less quick to judge the effort.
"It's had to evaluate when you win 11-1," Cleary said. "It's hard to see if you fore checked well."
What was easy to see was that the Crimson had skated away from Thompson Rink with an 11-1 triumph, no injuries and memories of one of their finest tree- trimming parties in years.
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