Post-Grad Hockey
FIVE FORMER DARTMOUTH STARS NOW SHINE FOR BOSTON OLYMPIC TEAM
JUST IN CASE you're wondering what happened to your favorite ice hockey- ist after he graduated, consider the case of five Dartmouth puck pushers of recent vintage—Paul Guibord '36, Frank Spain '34, Junie Allen '36, Jack Costello '37, and Dick Lewis '38—all currently engaged in making the Boston Olympics the best amateur hockey team in America.
Last winter, while Lewis was leading Dartmouth to the Quadrangular League championship, the Olympics won the National Amateur title in a walk with Guibord and Spain, whose team play brought Dartmouth its first Quadrangular League crown several years earlier, pacing the Olympics' attack.
Playing more games in Boston than the Bruins, Boston's entry in the National Hockey League, the Olympics won 25, lost 8, and tied one. Guibord, Spain and Allen accounted for 98 points among them, while Jack Costello would have added 20 or more to that total had he not been plagued with sickness and injuries for a greater part of the season.
AIMING AT PLAYOFFS
As this piece is tapped out, the Olympics are struggling to reach the playoffs in the Provincial Hockey League for a second time. The Boston team dropped out of the 1938 playoffs when their use of an alleged ineligible goalie, after the regular netminder stopped a puck with his chin and was unable to continue, brought about a league rumpus that threatened to develop into an international incident.
The Provincial Hockey League, let it be quickly pointed out, is a bruising Class AA circuit. All teams except the Olympics play in Canada and many of the players are just a step from the National Hockey League, the only major league of professional hockey.
In addition to brilliant young players, the Canadian teams also use broken-down major and minor leaguers who haven't what it takes to play in the big leagues any more but still know enough tricks to play a season or two in lesser company. A Canadian professional hockey player who has reached the twilight of his career can be reinstated as an amateur, thus accounting for the presence of several cauliflower-eared greybeards on every Provincial Hockey League team that comes to Boston.
This year, the Olympics haven't done quite so well in the Provincial League. The competition has been just a trifle keener with the result that the lads, almost all former college players, are losing by one goal instead of winning by the same margin. Attendance has not fallen oil at all, however, a definite indication that the Olympics are still crowd-pleasers.
Guibord, Spain and the other Dartmouth men on the team should receive recognition as Dartmouth ambassadors of good will. People who thought their sons would not be welcome at Dartmouth unless they had at least two pairs of skis now fully well realize that Dartmouth also sports hockey players of considerable prominence.
The Olympics have brought amateur hockey back to Boston in a big way. Two years ago, the Olympics—so-named because many of the players were members of former American Olympic teams—weren't drawing anyone but their relatives. The players had adopted the tired clubman's attitude about the game with the result that the hockey fans took the same attitude toward the Olympics, and stayed away.
Jerry Jeremiah, present Dartmouth coach, started the Olympics on the road back when Paul Guibord and Frank Spain joined the team. The following winter, Hago Harrington of Melrose, Mass., a cagey minor league hockey star with the Providence Reds for ten years, took over the coaching job, and with Howie McHugh '34, another former Big Green hockey player, to tub thump, the Olympics began to gather steam. Last April a total of 28,000 watched the Olympics play two successive Provincial League playoffs. It was a new Boston amateur hockey attendance record and probably won't ever be equalled until the Boston Garden is replaced by a larger structure.
The Provincial Hockey League is not a pink tea, like college hockey. The teams play big league rules which means that al- most no holds, unless they draw blood, are barred. When such ordinarily business- like players as Paul Guibord climax a board-checking feud with an abbreviated fist fight, it shows that the players are giving everything the old college try under professional regulations. Body checking at the defense, or "creaming," as the boys call it, is definitely of the bone-cracking type.
Because of a low admission price, the Olympics are bringing a new type of patron to amateur hockey. Many sports fans in the past, interested only in two-bit wrestling matches involving hooded grapplers, have finally tired of watching fakers perform and are now patronizing the Olympics, where for a quarter you can watch plenty of legitimate action from a good seat. And with 10,000 spectators egging them on, don't think the Olympics don't play good hockey. Every Dartmouth player on the team is from 20 to 40 per cent better than when in college.
TEAM STRICTLY AMATEUR
In the past, there has been considerable eye-lifting whenever the term amateur was used in connection with sports, but there's little doubt that the Olympics are 99 and 44/iooths per cent pure. Without expense money for the games in Canada, it would be 100 per cent, a figure not yet achieved by any athlete who ever lived. Any Dartmouth players on the team with an eye to the future would make a mistake to injure their amateur standing by taking money, sub rosa, for playing hockey. The word of Walter Brown, prexy of the Boston Olympics, will carry great weight when the 1940 American Olympic ice hockey team is selected and you can be sure that all the Dartmouth men on the Boston team will receive their share of the breaks.
Right now, it appears that Guibord and Spain are a sure thing to make the 1940 American Olympic team, while Costello, Allen, and Lewis have no worse than an even chance. It is not inconceivable that the next American Olympic team will boast a forward line of former Dartmouth captains with Paul Guibord at right wing, Frank Spain at center, and Dick Lewis at left wing. This certainly would be a rather important contribution to the alumni section of Dartmouth's athletic history.
