HOCKEY
All good things—to coin a phrase—must come to an end. Last winter it was the string of victories which led to several successive basketball championships. This winter is was the even more impressive series of triumphs which led the Green through four years of hockey without a defeat. To get to the business quickly, Yale beat Dartmouth 6-4 in the first game of the 1946 season, snapping a victory string which had extended through 46 contests. This melancholy occasion had to come sooner or later and come it did on the night of January 5 before an enthusiastic crowd of 3,000 clients in the Yale arena.
In the interests of objective journalism, your correspondent polled several members of the team on the events which led to this dismal opening of what promised to be another undefeated season. The gladiators were unanimous that they had been outplayed, outskated, and in general outfought by an inspired Yale team. They had no alibis whatever—despite the somewhat dubious quality of some of the Yale goals. (One of the Blue markers was apparently slipped in through a hole in the net, while another was allegedly scored after one of the officials had made a gesture to halt the play). Be that as it may, the boys in Green had no excuses forthcoming and maintained that they had nobody but themselves to blame for the beating.
The Dartmouth scoring was done by four different men, each contributing a lone tally to the total. Whitey Campbell scored the first goal on a pass from Captain Charlie Holt in the first period. In the second, Ralph Warburton slipped a screen shot past the Yale goalie. In the final frame, Joe Kraatz scored once, to be followed by Bruce Mather, who snagged a puck from the Yales and dunked it into the net. At this juncture, Dartmouth was one point behind with a minute to go. In a last desperate gesture, Coach Jeremiah removed the Dartmouth goalie and turned on the heat with all the offensive power at his command. This strategy backfired, however, and the Blue scored another goal to make the final score 6-4 and take the pressure off the Dartmouth aggregation to continue its winning streak.
The following Saturday, the local sports lovers were promised a treat in the collective person of the Toronto club. With one of its most whimsical vagaries, for which the local weather has been noted lately, it turned out so balmy that the ice melted and the game had to be canceled. As Whitey Fuller so felicitously phrased it, "Dartmouth's hockey rink is indoors, but the ice is naturally frozen by means of powerful blowers and by opening doors and windows to let in the cold air. Saturday, there just wasn't any cold air to let in."
Infuriated by the Yale setback and the resultant blemish upon their spotless and long-standing record, the Green came back on January 19 to swamp the Army at West Point by the score of 9-1, even as their compatriots on the basketball team were simultaneously (albeit not so conclusively) giving the boys in grey the business in Hanover. Collaborating in this highly satisfactory comeback was practically the entire first three forward walls of the Green sextet. The scoring went as follows: FirstPeriod; a goal by Mather unassisted; Second Period (and here they really poured it on); a goal by Captain Charlie Holt, with Cannon assisting; one by Campbell, with Mather helping; another by Mather out of Holt, as it were; and one by Kraatz with Warburton and Cunliffe collaborating: Third Period, this period was started by another goal by Kraatz, with Cunliffe lending a hand; one by Warburton with the help of Cunliffe; another with these roles reversed; and a final one for good measure by Captain Charlie Holt, abetted by Mather. (We trust that makes 9 in all.) The boys on skates are now back in the groove and when Yale returns to Hanover they had better hold on to their hats.
ONE DANGEROUS SCORING COMBINATION which Coach Eddie Jeremiah can turn loose against Dartmouth's ice foes is this speedy line of Captain Charlie Holt '45, Bruce Mather '47 and Whitey Campbell '46.
BACK FROM THE WARS, Hal Cannon '44, who was a First Lieutenant in the Army Air Corps, is again playing first-string defense man on the hockey team. He was in top form in the 9-1 victory over Army.
A HIGH-POWERED WING for Eddie Jeremiah this season, Bruce Cunliffe '47 played last year as a member of the Dartmouth Marine Detachment and is now enrolled as a civilian undergraduate. Hailing from Montreal, he takes naturally to hockey.
