Hockey Team Prepared to Win

The coming encounter with Princeton at the home of the Tiger on Saturday will be the third league game for the Varsity hockey team and the last of the Princeton series unless the Tigers show some unexpected strength and force an extra game in Madison Square Garden on Monday.

But there is at present no threat of a playoff being necessary. The Orange and Black has been seriously crippled by numerous injuries and with an almost non-existent reserve squad the Princeton team can only win through a series of opportune breaks. Coach Fredrickson seems resigned to his fate and has spent the last few practice sessions in developing power plays which are especially of effective against a short-handed opponent.

Penalties May Count

It is possible that those plays will have some effect if the Crimson players continue on their almost record crop of penalties. Especially the H line, which must also be given the credit for furnishing the life of the game and securing the greatest number of goals, has spent far too great a proportion of its time it the box. Things were looking up considerably in the game with Dartmouth on Saturday, however, as the Crimson sextet only gathered three penalties.

The game with the Indians was encouraging in many respects. It showed that the Harvard lines have reached a certain stability without losing their drive and it may be expected that the Crimson skaters will continue to show greater force as the season progresses and the players settle down to work in the same combinations. Not only has Stubbs three full lines, any one of which would make a repectable first line on a college team, but he also has Al Dewey hanging around the sidelines with sufficient versatility to take a place in any one of the combinations if something should suddenly go wrong.

Crimson Reserves Strong

It is the reserve strength of the Crimson which has given it its success so far this season. The lines are used for offensive work entirely but it has been possible to replace them often enough to allow good playing without diminishing to quality. Unfortunately the same cannot be said of the defense but Watts, Dow and Brown have so far been able to more than take care of the area behind the blue line.

Only Yale, which makes its first appearance against Harvard on Saturday March 2 in the Garden has an entire squad comparable to the Crimson. So far this year it has had a better record than Harvard in the extra-league games it beating the Canadian teams by small scores while the Crimson came cut in all its contests on the short end of a small score. The Eli aggregation is generally picked to snatch the intercollegiate title away from the third place Indians but is certain that they will have to show great power to skate away from the Crimson with another scalp hanging at their belts.

Goalies Inferior to Last Year

Goaltenders are always interesting parts of a hockey team but this year the League does not have as good a display as last season. Harvard is in the process of developing Ash Emerson as a successor to Paul DeGive but he will never have the same brilliancy although he is doing a good job in the nets. Yale has its captain, John Snyder, guarding its portals and to his fine work in the McGill game is attributed the greater part of the Bulldog success. Princeton tries Stew Gregory as equal to Snyder but his performances so far this season seem somewhat inferior to Emerson's.