I got into Providence a little bit after noon, in plenty of time to be both a glutton for punishment and just a glutton, period.

For the fourth time this season, I went to see Dartmouth football in action, and for the third time this year, the Big Green suffered a heartbreaking loss, this one a 24-14 defeat at Brown Stadium. It's been a tough year for Buddy Teevens, but his former teammate, Bob Gaudet, can remind him that there's always light at the end of the tunnel, as the Big Green knocked off Cornell tonight after starting the season 0-4.

After the game, I made my way over to Spike's Junkyard Dogs on Thayer Avenue to try and join the "Kennel Club." Anxiously awaiting the new issue of Sports Illustrated On Campus has become something of a tradition for CSTV.com staffers, and one we'll probably miss when they switch to a web-only format next month. Anyway, the most recent issue recommends "102 Things to Do Before You Graduate," one of which is to join the "Kennel Club," which is accomplished by eating six hot dogs in an hour and a half. While I've been out of school for a couple of years now, I figured it wasn't too late to make the trip to Spike's. It might not have been the soundest decision.

I don't think I'll be able to look at a hot dog again for at least a month, but it was well worth it. I arrived at Spike's at 4:32, and 90 minutes, one Buffalo Dog (wing sauce, blue cheese and scallions), one German Shepherd (mustard and sauerkraut), one Ball Park Dog (mustard, cheddar cheese and onions), one Reuben Dog (Russian Dressing, sauerkraut and swiss), and two Mutts (plain hot dogs) later, I walked out with a free T-shirt and the knowledge that my photo will hang on the wall at Spike's for years to come.

Of course, an even greater accomplishment than eating the hot dogs was making it back over to Meehan Auditorium with all of that in my stomach, in time to see the St. Lawrence Saints take on the Brown Bears.

THE RINK: Meehan Auditorium is, for lack of a better word, funky. The building is almost perfectly circular, with a domed roof. There's very little seating behind the goals, as most fans sit in the trapezoid-shaped sections that run on either side of the length of the ice. I don't know what it is about Brown and trapeziods - the home stands at Brown Stadium are also built in a trapezoid configuration. I guess having "concentrations" instead of majors is just one of the ways that Brown distinguishes itself from other schools, and this is another.

There are a couple of other very nice touches that contribute to Meehan's charm, not the least of which is the large stuffed brown bear just inside the front entrance. I don't know if visiting teams come through the front entrance, but I know that if I walked through the door to find myself face to face with a brown bear reared up on its hind paws, I might be just a bit intimidated. The more conventional decorations - photo galleries of past teams and members of the Brown Hockey Hall of Fame - are also nicely done.

GAME 13: BROWN 3, ST. LAWRENCE 1

Once again, I pitched in and wrote the recap for my friends at USCHO, so if you want a blow-by-blow on the game, you can get that here.

St. Lawrence reminds me a little bit of UNH in some ways, most notably in that both teams and love to shoot the puck. That should go without saying, of course, given that the object of the game is to put the puck in the net but both St. Lawrence and UNH will shoot from anywhere and everywhere in the offensive zone. T.J. Trevelyan, who I spoke to after the game for a CSTV.com streaming audio interview, is a big time shooter; he finished the weekend with well over 80 shots.

There wasn't too much of a crowd on hand for this game, which is somewhat understandable, given that the Brown football and men's soccer teams had played for Ivy League titles earlier in the day, but it's a shame, because this was a really fun game to watch, and the Brown devotees who did show up had a good time, adding the nice touch at the end of shaking their keys while yelling, "Warm up the bus!" The Brownies also seemed to enjoy giving Saints associate head coach Chris Wells a hard time, for reasons I don't entirely understand.

This game could also have easily gone the other way if not for several hit pipes by the Saints and some monster goaltending by Adam D'Alba. D'Alba is a heck of a keeper, and could be the No. 2 goalie in the ECACHL behind Dave McKee. St. Lawrence coach Joe Marsh said to me after the game that Brown always seems to come up with a very solid goaltender, and that continued even after the graduation of Yann Danis. D'Alba was strong as a freshman, and he's definitely getting better as he grows.

Speaking of Danis, USCHO Women's Game of the Week announcer Brian Schulz pointed out something to me the other day: Yann's assignment to Hamilton of the AHL ended a brief period in which every hockey-playing Ivy League school was represented in the NHL, with Princeton's Jeff Halpern, Harvard's Dominic Moore, Dartmouth's Lee Stempniak (a popular "toughest opponent" choice in my conversations with current college players), Yale's Chris Higgins, and Cornell's Joe Nieuwendyk joining several other Ivy alumni.

Other notes:

- Zamboni driver Hermano Fortes is announced as "Brown's Ice Wizard." No signs as to whether he can provide brains, hearts, or courage, but I suppose he could get you home on the Zamboni, although that would probably move a bit too slowly. In any case, he definitely seems to enjoy his job, and the younger fans at the game really like him.

- When I attended ECACHL Media Day, I asked a few offbeat questions to each of the league's coaches, including "What TV character most closely resembles you?" Brown coach Roger Grillo answered, "Bugs Bunny," but watching him at the game, I must say that he reminds me a lot more of "obsessive compulsive detective" Adrian Monk.

- There were a couple of interesting musical choices over the Brown P.A. - one of which was a dance remix of the Offspring's "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)." I must say that if I were picking songs to make dance remixes of, that song would come in just ahead of the version of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" that the Hartford Wolf Pack uses for its intro music.

Other than that, there's not too much to say, except that this was a very good game between two teams that will certainly be heard from the ECACHL this season. My interviews with both T.J. Trevelyan and Brown's Brian Ihnacak - which you'll be able to hear very soon, were very enjoyable, as were my postgame conversations with both coaches. All in all, it was a nice ending to a good weekend of hockey.

Sadly, my train back to Boston was delayed, thanks to a power outage between Stamford and New Haven, so I wound up taking a Greyhound bus back to Beantown. That makes two weeks in a row I've had train issues, which leads me to just one thought: Next week, I'm driving!