HOCKEY

The odds that Mike Turner would play the final game of the season at Princeton were extremely long. The chances of a Dartmouth win were also slim.

Turner, the gritty junior center from Melrose, Mass., who became the tenth man from Melrose to lead Dartmouth's skaters (he succeeds Ken Davidson for the 1971-72 season), suffered a severe bruise over his left eye during a 6-1 loss at Penn on the night prior to the Princeton test.

In the same game, Davidson and senior wing Jeff Kosak were ejected for fighting with the muscular Quakers, an action that evoked suspension from the next scheduled game.

So Turner, with a patched eye, joined forces with senior wing Dave Hill and gave Dartmouth the spark that produced a 4-3 win over the Tigers and left the Green with a 9-15 final record.

Turner and Hill each scored twice and had two assists apiece at Princeton's Baker Rink. "You couldn't have asked for a guttier performance," said Coach Grant Standbrook in the aftermath. Hill and Turner combined for a goal each in the first 32 seconds of the third period that broke a 2-2 tie against the luckless Tigers and Dartmouth was home free.

The win gave Dartmouth a carbon copy of the 1969-70 record but the overall effort was substantially improved. The Indians, still woefully thin on defense, found new fire among the front lines which developed markedly in back-checking the opposition, and this effort, combined with sharp goaltending by sophomore Peter Proulx, made the outlook for next year much brighter.

Turner's scoring at Princeton gave him 42 points for the season, the most for a Dartmouth player since Dale Mathews collected 45 in 1964-65. It marked the second straight year that Turner had pushed past Davidson for the individual scoring lead.

Davidson, who had 34 points, didn't score in the-Penn game but his goal on a beautiful effort with Turner in the first period of a 5-3 loss to Clarkson the weekend before gave the durable skater from Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., an even 100 points for his career. He's the 16th Dartmouth player to hit that select circle.

The season was virtually as frustrating as the basketball campaign. The Indians lost five games by one goal and three games by two. It was a team that loses five seniors. Among them are Kosak, Hill, and defensemen Vince Orchard and Mike Barle.

Junior forward Paul Erland shooting thepoint against Columbia that gave hima Dartmouth season scoring record. Heled the Ivy League with an average of26 points a game.