In a conference call yesterday afternoon, the Eastern College Athletic Conference announced how it will handle the University of Vermont's cancellation of its men's hockey season.
The league will maintain all records and statistics from earlier ECAC games involving Vermont, but will not award forfeit victories to UVM's 15 remaining scheduled opponents. Teams will receive no credit for the games they were supposed to have played versus the Catamounts.
ECAC standings for this season will be determined by winning percentage instead of by points.
The league explained further that UVM will automatically be the last-place team for the year, regardless of whether its winning percentage is better than that of other ECAC teams at any point during the season.
A number of scheduling changes accompanied the information about statistics and standings. Dartmouth, which was Vermont's traveling partner within the ECAC, rescheduled five of its games with other changes still possible.
The Big Green will face Clarkson on Sunday, Jan. 30 instead of the original Jan. 29. The game's 12:30 p.m. start will push back the beginning of the Dartmouth women's hockey match against Yale to 4 p.m.
Dartmouth's Friday, February 4 tilt with Union has been moved back to Feb. 3.
Three consecutive Saturday games -- on Feb. 19, Feb. 26 and March 4 against Princeton, Cornell and St. Lawrence -- have all been moved a day later.
Dartmouth is still considering ways to alter its schedule for the upcoming weekend, this Friday at Cornell and Saturday at Colgate.
The change from a point system to a winning percentage-based system immediately moves Harvard from a tie for first place to a tie for seventh. Dartmouth moves up into fourth place in the ECAC.
Typically, a team receives two points for a win and one for a tie. The eight teams with the highest point totals compete in the ECAC playoffs that begin March 10.
These changes were made necessary by UVM's decision to terminate the remainder of its season after school officials learned that members of the team had lied about hazing practices during an earlier university inquiry.
