The Christmas Trip
In striking contrast to the depressing experience of the basketball team, Coach Jeremiah's boys had a highly successful Yuletide hegira, in which they won three, tied one, and dropped one against some of the stiffest opposition in the country. The tabulation for this genial junket was as follows:
(1) Dartmouth 6, Michigan 3. (2) Dartmouth 11, California 2. (3) Dartmouth 2, Olympic Club 2 (Overtime). (4) Dartmouth 4, Colorado 3 (Overtime). (5) Colorado 5, Dartmouth 2.
Embarking upon the trip with only one game behind them as a result of the vagaries of the Hanover weather, the Green journeyed to Ann Arbor where, on December 23, they met a Michigan team heavily fortified with Canadian players. This aggregation was reputedly so formidable as to play on virtually equal terms with the Detroit Red Wings. In the first five minutes of the game, it looked as though Michigan would run Dartmouth right off the ice, with the Wolverines counting two goals in that brief period. In the remaining 55 minutes, however, the Green picked themselves up off the ice and won the game, 6-3. Bruce Cunliffe had himself an excellent night, scoring three goals, with two by Bruce Mather and one by Bill Riley. Some of the boys felt that this was their best game of the entire trip.
A long jaunt to the Pacific Coast resulted in an initial field day for the Green, with an 11-2 shellacking of California at Berkeley. This exhibition, by the way, gave the San Francisco alumni something pleasant to think about to counteract the two basketball losses sustained several days later in the same city. In this encounter, Bruce Mather had quite an evening, with four goals and a pair of assists. The Riley brothers accounted for three markers, with Jack counting two and Bill one. The rest of the scoring was done by Cunliffe with two goals and Warburton and Thayer with one apiece. Even in sunny California, apparently, the hockey players come from Canada, for the team reported a number of men -from north of the border functioning for the boys from Berkeley.
The next night was another story, however, with the Olympic Club providing the opposition and a 2-2 count in an overtime game the result. This aggregation was also composed largely of Canadians and was considerably older than the Dartmouth team. The Olympics started out with a couple of goals in the first period and then dug in and fought off desperate Dartmouth rallies for the rest of the evening. The Indian markers were contributed by Cunliffe and Jack Riley. The Olympics goalie negotiated some 38 saves to 15 for the Dartmouth tender, which suggests the relative pressure placed upon the two defenses.
Moving East to Colorado Springs, Coach Jeremiah's proteges put in a couple of strenuous evenings against Colorado, winning the first and then dropping the second game for their only defeat of the trip. My informant informs me that it was the roughest pair of games he has ever played in, with no quarter asked or given by either side. The body checking was virtual mayhem and both aggregations dished it out in (legally) brutal fashion. The Dartmouth scoring in the first game was done by Thayer, Bill Riley, Cunliffe, and Mather, with each contributing one goal. In this game, the Indians reversed the situation against the Olympics, with the Dartmouth goalie (Desmond) making 40 saves to 17 for his Colorado opposite number.
The final engagement of the trip was lost to Colorado by the score of 5-2. This contest, continues my well-informed source, was also a rough one but, as he pointed out graphically, "it was a dance compared to the previous night." The score was 2-2 until half way through the third period, when Colorado scored their third goal. From that time on until the end of the game, Dartmouth was consistently short of men on the ice (via penalties), but despite this lack of manpower they threw the book at the enemy. With the defense thus weakened, Colorado scored twice more to bring the score 5-2 and conclude a really rugged series. The two Dartmouth goals were scored by Bill Riley and Bruce Mather. In this trip, Dartmouth went out and picked the tough ones from the middle west, the far west, and the mountain states. They did all right too.
