Big Green Rallies to Trip Crimson Icemen, 5-4

Dartmouth teams have a tendency to do strange things when they get to Cambridge. Witness a football team that turned a losing season into a championship one after playing Harvard. Witness a hockey team that came to Watson Rink last night and combined a goalie named Chuck Walker with a broken Zamboni to leave with a 5-4 victory over Harvard.

The Crimson icemen had the edge in play right from the start, as they pressed for 11 first periods shots on net to Dartmouth's eight. But a couple of penalties late in the period turned the momentum, and the Big Green struck for two goals in the first and a quick goal at the start of the second stanza for a substantial lead.

Greg Cronin started the scoring at 14:31 of the first while Dartmouth was enjoying a two man advantage. With both Ed Rossi and Jim Thomas out, Cronin took the pass from linemate Danny Tomiak and poked it by Crimson netminder Jim Murray.

Charlie Solberg made it 2-0 for the Green at 16:27, as he capped off some nice passing Peter Quinn and Howie Hampton with a shot into the lower left corner of the net. The middle stanza saw Quinn up the score to 3-0 at 1:23, but Harvard did not let up and came back with four unanswered goals in the period to take the lead.

Two minutes after Quinn's score, Steve Dagdigian beat Big Green goalie Chuck Walker low and to his left. Jim McMahon narrowed the lead to one with a similar shot at 11:46.

Sophomore Kevin Burke tied up the contest on a shot from in close at 16:30 and Leigh Hogan gave the Crimson what seemed its rightful lead at 16:54 of the period. But that was all the scoring that Harvard would manage, as they came out in the third period after a long delay looking somewhat flat, and Dartmouth snatched victory on a pair of tallies.

Zamboni Causes Delay

The delay was caused by a rather large, deep and quite dangerous ditch in the ice caused by the Zamboni. The ice cleaning machine stalled in the middle of the rink between periods. In his desire to get it started again the driver kept revving up the engine, thus producing a great amount of ice-melting exhaust.

The final period was played with each team taking the defective end for ten minutes, with Harvard getting it first. The pace was slow at the start and the scrappy Dartmouth skaters took advantage of it to score the tying goal midway through the first half-period.

Tomiak took his own rebound and stuffed it past a fallen Murray after 5:07 had elapsed. The Crimson had a few good chances on Walker, but as in the first period Harvard could not convert.

Quinn got his second goal of the night a quarter of the way into the final half-period and the Big Green made it stand up for its second win against one loss.