Skaters, Girding for Opener, Boast an Experienced Team

Take a quick glance at the roster of this year's hockey team, and you'll think for sure that the squad can't miss having a wonderful season. But look a little closer, and you may want to reserve your judgment for a while.

What makes things good in the fact that from last year's runner-up teams for the Pentagonal League title, only six lattermen have graduated. An a result, the experience of what Coach John Chase calls a "pretty rough season" will be behind a big bloc of players.

The catch is two-fold. Of those men on the team today, five will graduate at midyear. And of those six who graduated last June, more than one have left crucial gaps in the lineup.

30 Working Out

Right now Chase and his three assistants are rehearing a squad of 30 three of four times a week at the Arena an Boston Skating Club in an effort to fill the holes left by such graduated standouts as Dave Key, Tom Moseley, and Dick Grecley. The first game comes up Saturday with M.I.T., and the coaches have a fair idea of who will take the ice. But there isn't any starting lineup yet.

Currently there are two potentially powerful "first" lines. Captain Myles Huntington, last season's high scorer with 40 points, is centering one, with Dave Abbot and Doug Anderson at right and left wings. Anderson hasn't the experience of Huntington and Abbot, but "I think he can do it," Coach chase says.

The other line is similarly high in potential, and that's why Coach Chase can't pick out his starters. On this line are Lew Preston, who averaged a goal a game in the half-season he played on the first line last year; Bill Garrity, also of last year's line; and Joe Kittredge, a scrappy junior up from the third line.

The Crimson defense picture is even more fluid. There are plenty of men, but, quoting Chase, "they've got a long way to go before they'll be at their best."

Al Key and Algie Allen, who worked as a pair last season, are back; but they both graduate in February. Jack Carman and Bob DiBlasio form a great big pair; but both men are still adapting them selves from football. The other available defensemen are the sophomores.

Leading goalie prospects are Johnny Chase and Phil Clark, both of whom saw considerable action last season, and sophomore Ted Cook.

The team's 18-game schedule shows a preponderance of matches with nearby schools; but these teams are all "pretty good," according to Chase's pre-season sizeups. A Christmas trip west, with games against Minnesota and Michigan, had been planned, but the steel strike held up completion of Minnesota's new rink which the Crimson was to have helped inaugurate. So the junket was called off.