Icemen Get a Rematch With McKenzie

Harvard has been embarrassed once in the hockey rink this year. Only one team in the ECAC has beaten the Crimson icemen by more than one goal in a game. That game also snapped a seven-game win streak.

When Harvard's powerful hockey team takes to the ice tonight at 8 p.m. in Watson Rink, it will be facing the Yale squad that demolished it, 6-1, last weekend in New Haven. The team will skate against a Yale senior, Ken MacKenzie, who looked more like a brick wall than a goaltender in last Saturday's fiasco.

MacKenzie was named the Ivy League's player of the week by virtue of his spectacular 39-save effort against the Crimson, whom he held scoreless for the first 53 minutes of the contest. Only Bob Goodenow's drive, in the midst of a five-minute Harvard power-play, managed to elude the acrobatic net tender.

Insult and Injury

To add insult to injury, Yale is the Ivy League's cellar-dweller, along with Brown. With a win tonight, Harvard would be the Ivy champion.

The game carries with it the same implications as almost every Crimson-Eli confrontation has this year. The sports have changed, the statistics are a little different each time, but the effect is always the same: Harvard wants sole possession of an Ivy championship; Yale wants to prevent it.

While the Crimson looks forward to post-season ECAC play beginning Tuesday night at Watson, the Elis will play their final game tonight. Retiring after the contest, among others, will be Eli captain Bobby Kane, who last week picked up the 51 st goal of his career, tying him for third place on the Yale lifetime goal list.

Following Wednesday's 6-2 whipping of the Big Green skaters at Dartmouth, the Crimson now sport the Ivies' two leading scorers, Steve Dadigian and Jim McMahon, each with 20 points, followed closely by captain Bob Goodenow, Randy Roth and Kevin Carr in the league statistics. In short, the Harvard attack is formidable.

Returning to goal tonight will probably be sophomore Jim Murray, who turned in an outstanding 30-save effort against Dartmouth, but was relatively ineffective against the Elis last Saturday. Should coach Bill Cleary choose to rest Murray for Tuesday night's action, John Aiken, who was impressive in Harvard's 3-2 defeat of Northeastern, will be ready for action.

Cleary said that his squad skated well in practice yesterday, but that the status of Carr and Dave Gauthier, who were both sidelined in the Dartmouth game due to injuries, is still uncertain.

Second-Place Seeding

"Winning the Ivy championship is obviously of paramount importance to us," Cleary said, "but the game carries added meaning because a victory may insure us of a second-place seeding in the upcoming tournament."

Harvard is currently in a close battle with BU for that seeding behind first-place New Hampshire, with both squads now tied at 14-6.