The varsity hockey team will meet Northeastern at the Arena at 7 p.m. tonight, but it is doubtful if many Crimson partisans will see the game unless they already have their tickets. The evening's intercollegiate hockey entertainment has been a complete sellout for nearly two weeks, not because Harvard is playing Northeastern, but because BC and BU will indulge in their second annual bloodbath in the feature attraction at 9 p.m.

Although Harvard has already edged the Huskies once this season (5 to 4 January 16) and is a heavy favorite to do so again, the game is of crucial importance to the team's later season chances, it means that coach John chase has 60 minutes of competitive hockey during which to find a new set of defensive combinations before the varsity meets Dartmouth Wednesday and Princeton Friday.

Unless Chase can come up with a good defense against the Huskies, there can be little optimism in any of the later Pentagonal games with Yale, Dartmouth, and Princeton.

Different Denfenses Used

Against BU, Harvard employed about half a dozen different defensive pairings using five defensemen--Carman, Bliss, Burke, Sedgwick, and Donelan. For the last two periods, defensive substitutions were usually made one man at a time apparently because Chase was searching for a pair of effective combinations. Toward the end of the game, however, he was using only Carman, Bliss, and Burke.

Boston College played only three defensemen per game as a rule last year, and if the Crimson's three regulars can do it, it could provide a solution to the hockey team's defense problem.