WITH THE BIG GREEN TEAMS
AT the Beta House there was a chart on the wall. It listed each hour through the night. It also listed the name of the brother who was responsible each hour for changing the ice pack on Dean Mathews' leg. Dartmouth's Ivy League hockey hopes had been endangered by a charley horse to the square-jawed, junior wing from Edina, Minn., and his fraternity brothers were pitching in to get the league's leading scorer ready for the pending, crucial battle with Cornell.
It would be nice to report that Mathews came off the bench to score the winning goal against the Big Red but it didn't happen. Dean was able to play in this February 20 game through the ministrations of his fraternity brothers and trainer Irv Fountain (who even drove him to classes to protect the balky leg).
But Mathews saw only occasional action and Cornell, probably the best team in the league at the moment, won the game 3-2.
As Coach Eddie Jeremiah predicted early in the season, this Ivy campaign turned into one of the closest in recent years. Brown was off fast, winning its first six in a row. Included was a 4-2 victory over Dartmouth February 3 in Providence. Cornell, expected to be a strong contender, began slowly and fell twice before lowly Yale. Then the Big Red began to move, buoyed by its 15 Canadians. It destroyed Harvard 9-2, came from behind against Dartmouth as mentioned above. With a 5-3 league record and home games remaining against both Brown and the Big Green, Cornell still hoped for a piece of that Ivy title.
Dartmouth? The most exciting team on campus. A squad with four or five outstanding players and fantastic spirit. When their ten-game winning streak (longest since 1948) was interrupted in that first Brown game, the players were furious with themselves. "We beat ourselves. We thought Brown was unbeatable. And when we discovered they were just human like the rest of us, we couldn't get untracked. We'll beat 'em in Hanover," said Captain Jim Cooper.
Two games set the stage for Brown's return game at Hanover. First there was Boston College. The Eagles came in as the East's number one team and they looked it as they romped to a 5-1 lead in the opening period. Then Dartmouth got down to work. With the aforementioned Mathews scoring four goals, the Indians rallied twice to finally tie at 8-8 late in the third period. Regulation time ended with that score and a ten-minute overtime began. Dartmouth had won its last seven overtime games, including four this season. But it was not to be this night. After three minutes of play a B.C. senior slid the puck home for the 9-8 victory.
Dartmouth players, disappointed and tired as they were, lined up at the rink exit to congratulate the victors. And the capacity crowd rose to its feet and applauded the valiant Big Green effort for a full three minutes after the game.
The other prelude to Brown was the traditional Carnival Saturday morning game, this year with Yale. Tickets for the event had been sold out in an hour and 20 minutes. The Carnival queen, a Simmons College junior named Nancy Thompson, made an appearance on skates between the first and second periods. Captain Cooper was sidelined with a leg injury. So seniors Chuck Zeh of Duluth and Chip Hayes of Ann Arbor, acting co-captains, presented Miss Thompson with a box of Valentine chocolates and a couple of resounding kisses to the delight of the audience.
Then Hayes & Co. proceeded to destroy Yale. Chip scored three goals and three assists to run his career point total to 102. This qualified the first line center as the 13th member of Dartmouth's Century Club (players who have scored 100 points or more during their varsity careers) .
Mathews, who had scored at least one goal in the previous nine games, was on the rampage also. He notched two goals and four assists to become the East's top goal scorer with 25 goals in 17 games.
Then in came undefeated Brown for the Ivy game of the year on February 17.
Cooper still was idled with a leg injury and replaced by sophomore Peter Rosser of Rocky River, Ohio, on the first line. Mathews had received a leg bruise against Yale but would play. Brown coach Jim Fullerton admitted he would use a "trailer" against the East's top goal- getter. That meant one man would do nothing but dog Mathews' skate strides and try to prevent him from getting the puck.
The Brown strategy worked. Mathews, below par anyway, was shut out for the first time in 11 games. He also received another leg check which necessitated the emergency all-night ice treatment by his Beta brothers.
But the Brown strategy also meant that the Bruins' top line with high scoring Canadians Terry Chapman and Bruce Darling would be pitted against Dartmouth's second wave of Karl Andrews-Dick Larson-Bill Smoyer. And this was the decisive factor in the game.
The Green's second trio not only neutralized Brown's best (for the first time in any game this season) but it scored Dartmouth's first five goals. Andrews of Colorado Springs and Larson of Duluth, both juniors, had two goals and two assists each. Sophomore Smoyer of Princeton, N. J., had a goal and three assists.
Dartmouth's All-Ivy goalie Budge Gere of Clinton, N. Y., turned away 45 Brown shots, 38 of them in the final two periods. So as Captain Cooper had promised, Dartmouth beat Brown in Hanover by a decisive 6-3 margin.
Coach Eddie Jeremiah '30, whose Dartmouth hockey team tied Brown for the Ivy League lead by beating them 6-3 in Hanover,February 17, shown in the box (left) and in the dressing room during that crucial game. With him in the dressing room photo areRosendahl (17), Hayes (7), Mathews (6), Smoyer (9), and Gere and Stebe in lower right corner.
Coach Eddie Jeremiah '30, whose Dartmouth hockey team tied Brown for the Ivy League lead by beating them 6-3 in Hanover,February 17, shown in the box (left) and in the dressing room during that crucial game. With him in the dressing room photo areRosendahl (17), Hayes (7), Mathews (6), Smoyer (9), and Gere and Stebe in lower right corner.
