Dartmouth coach Bob Gaudet remembers the turning point in his team’s season last year. Holding a 2-8-1 record and set to play a road game against defending national champion Denver on Dec. 16, 2017, Gaudet decided to restructure his forward lines.
If he was going to go down anyway, why not go down swinging? Gaudet assembled a top forward line laden with oversized underclassmen — sophomores Will Graber (6-foot-5, 190 pounds) and Shane Sellar (6-foot-3, 200 pounds), along with freshman Quin Foreman (6-foot-3, 195 pounds).
Dartmouth’s new “Timber Line” accounted for two goals that evening, as the Big Green came back from a 3-0 deficit to win 5-4. After making that line change, Gaudet saw his team go 14-9-1 over the final 24 games.
“We’re at the defending national champs, and those guys became a formidable line at Denver,” Gaudet (Saugus, Mass.) said. “Those guys had the puck, kept the puck and created offense. And they were solid defensively.”
Foreman (Needham, Mass.) emerged as a versatile power forward and continued to improve as the season progressed. He finished fourth on the team in scoring (eight goals, 11 assists), earning the Booma Award as the team’s Rookie of the Year. After recording the first Dartmouth hat trick by a freshman on Feb. 23 against Yale, Foreman was named ECAC Hockey Rookie of the Year.
“He has a great shot, and he’s really strong on the puck,” Gaudet said. “He’s a big, long kid. He might have been overlooked because he’s not going to fly around the ice at 100 mph. But he’s quick. When people think about quickness, they tend to associate it with foot speed. He’s first to the puck more often than not because his speed of anticipating is better than most.”
By the end of his freshman year, Foreman often was contributing to the biggest goals of the season. For instance, he scored the final Dartmouth goal of the season in an ECAC Hockey tournament Game 3 quarterfinal series at Harvard.
“He worked hard to get better and better,” Gaudet said. “That’s intangible — that desire to get better on a daily basis. Being strong on the puck is a matter of will. Some small guys are good on the puck, and some big guys aren’t. He has great hands, and he does everything well consistently. He’s a really good player.”
Gaudet plans to start “The Timber Line” together again this year, which certainly could go a long way to helping the Big Green avoid another 2-8-1 start. The late-season run helped Dartmouth jump to the No. 5 seed in the ECAC Hockey tournament. This year, the Big Green will be looking for a top-four seed and a first-round bye.
“Hopefully we won’t have to go through an adjustment process,” Foreman said. “We should be adjusted right away and be able to build on it. We should have a better year than last year. That start put us behind the 8-ball all season, but we’re an older team this year.”
