Good afternoon from Meehan Auditorium, where we are just over two hours away from the Union men's hockey team possibly making history tonight when it faces Brown.

The Dutchmen are in great shape to earn its first-ever first-round bye in the ECAC Hockey tournament. They are in a three-way tie with Cornell and Harvard for third place. Clarkson and Princeton have already clinched byes, so three teams are fighting for the two byes.

Cornell hosts Harvard tonight at 7, while Union's game starts at 7:30. By around 9:15 p.m., the Dutchmen may know if they have clinched a bye.

Here are all the scenarios for Union:
-- Finishes third with a win and a Harvard tie or loss.
-- Finishes fourth with a win and a Harvard win.
-- Finishes fourth with a tie.
-- Finishes fourth with a loss and a Harvard win.
-- Finishes fifth with a loss and a Harvard loss or tie.

Union owns the tiebreaker over Cornell for winning the season series. Harvard has tiebreaker over Union for the same reason.

Tonight's game against Brown won't be easy. The Bears are coming off a 2-1 loss to RPI on Friday. They gave up those goals in a 31-second span very late in the game. The Bears are tied with Dartmouth for last place, and they will be working hard to avoid finishing at the bottom of the standings.

Knowing that, the Dutchmen can't expect to play an ugly game and get away with it, like they did in Friday's 2-1 win over Yale. With a chance of getting a week off to rest injuries and get the flu bug out of the locker room, the Dutchmen need to come out inspired for tonight's game.

And if the Dutchmen need anymore inspiration, earning a bye would mean the end of my goatee and sideburns.

Back in October, I made a bet with Gazette assistant sports editor Tom Boggie about where Union would finish. I picked the Dutchmen to finish ninth in the preseason media poll, and he predicted a fourth-place finish. He said that if Union finished in the top four, I would have to shave my goatee. I agreed to the bet.

I think I will be clean shaven Sunday morning. I've had the goatee since 1995; the sideburns were added this year. My 7-year-old son has never seen me clean shaven, so he'll get a kick out of it. But I will be growing it back!

It's very quiet in the building right now. I don't expect the building to fill up much when they open the doors at 6 p.m. It wouldn't shock me to see the Union fans outnumber the Brown fans.

Cleaning up some debris from Friday:

-- Dutchmen defenseman Michael Beynon and referee Tim Benedetto collided with each other in the Yale zone late in the third period. Benedetto, who landed on his back, didn't appear too happy. He got up, skated over to Beynon and had some words with him. Benedetto then went over to Union coach Nate Leaman to talk about it.

"They were just talking about getting out of the way of one another," Leaman said. "It's the third period, there's two minutes left, and it was tense."

Beynon wasn't happy.

"It was a weird situation," Beynon said. "It happened, and I'll leave it at that."

-- Dutchmen forward Matt Cook picked up just his second penalty of the season in the first period. His other penalty also came against Yale in the Nov. 3 game at Messa Rink.

-- Former Dutchmen Craig Ferraro and Scott Boyd were at the game.

That's all for now. Talk to you later.