The race for the playoffs in the ECAC -- one of the most exciting in the past several years -- has come down to the final weekend of the regular season. Seven teams have already made it into the ten-team tournament, and the final three playoff berths will be awarded this weekend.
Five teams -- RPI, Princeton, Dartmouth, Union and Yale -- are fighting for the final three playoff spots, and, in an interesting twist, RPI and Union will be playing Yale and Princeton this weekend.
The Big Green, currently in 10th place in the ECAC, hold their destiny in their own hands -- if they win both weekend games, against Harvard tonight and Brown tomorrow night, they are automatically in the tournament, but if they lose twice, they will miss the postseason.
Even if the Big Green do not win twice, if they pick up a total of two or three points this weekend, they still stand a reasonably good chance of making the playoffs, based on the results of other games.
Besides its own two games against Harvard and Brown, Dartmouth's playoff fortunes are linked to four other games: tonight's Yale-Union and Princeton-RPI matchups and tomorrow's Princeton-Union and Yale-RPI games.
Among these six games, there are a total of 729 total outcomes. But The Dartmouth has determined all possible scenarios by which the Big Green can make the playoffs as shown by the chart to the right.
