Ivy Committee Denies Eligibility To Canadian Junior A,B Stickmen

Beginning with the class of 1973, virtually all Canadian Junior A hockey players will be ineligible for Ivy League competition, according to a resolution passed last Wednesday by the Committee on Coordination and Eligibility for the Ivy Group.

The resolution, which was passed unanimously by the committee of deans and administrators from the eight Ivy League schools, disqualifies any Canadian who has played in either the Junior A or B leagues.

However, the tightened regulations probably will not effect most Junior B players since they normally do not receive the funds paid to Junior a players, Dean Watson, Harvard's representative on the committee, said yesterday.

Stricter Enforcement

Watson--who chaired the meeting in place of Dean Gerald Robinson of the University of Pennsylvania, the official chairman--explained the change as an effort to enforce more strictly the existing ECAC regulations.

In the past, the Ivies have followed the ECAC procedure, which requires every Canadian player to sign an affidavit with three stipulations:

* That he has not received any remuneration for his participation or, in the event he has received money, that he demonstrate that it has not exceeded the "actual and necessary expenses" for meals and transportation.

* That he has never signed a professional contract.

* That he submit a list of the teams for which he has played from the age of 16.

The new ruling automatically denies a Junior A or B player eligibility, until he has clearly shown that he has not violated any of the stipulations. the committee has also imposed a more stringent interpretation on "actual and necessary expenses" than the ECAC regulations.

Minor League

Canada's Junior A leagues are somewhat comparable to the United States' minor league baseball system. Junior A players are the elite 16 to 20 year-olds and many of them graduate to the National Hockey League. Most of the players accept extra expense money and some receive salaries, ranging up to $3000-4000 a year for the top players.

Although nearly all Eastern teams have Canadians--60 per cent of the players on Division 1 teams are Canadians--there are only a handful of Junior A players in the Ivy League. Even the all-Canadian Cornell team has only five Junior A players and Harvard has one, sophomore goalie Bruce Durno.

The first Junior A player to gain eligibility in the Ivy League was Eugene Kinasewich '64, assistant dean of the College. Watson submitted Kinasewich's case to the Committee in 1960, after he had sat out his freshman year. The Committee granted him three years of eligibility, but the action was understood by the deans to be an exception, Watson said.

Since then, Watson said, several schools have recognized that case as a precedent and have not consulted the committee. Watson refused to say what schools, but Kinasewich said yesterday that Cornell, in particular, has admitted a number of Junior A players.

"Some of the schools misunderstood the oral agreement after Kinasewich's case and thought that the ECAC rules still held," Watson said. "This resolution eliminates the confusion and establishes a workable procedures," he added.