The varsity hockey team will play the St. Nicholas Hockey Club of Boston tonight at 8 p.m. in Watson Rink.

Harvard coach Cooney Weiland hopes that this game will give him a chance to try some new line combinations in preparation for the St. Lawrence game on Monday.

The St. Nicholas team consists of former college hockey players, including Harvard great Bob McVey, a member of the U.S. Olympic hockey team of 1960. He will join other members of the Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Middlebury teams of the fifties against the varsity.

Cleary Brothers May Play

Although the Cleary brothers are not listed on the SNHC roster, don't be surprised if they join the club tonight at Watson. They have surprised Welland before in SNHC-Harvard games.

Welland has added defensemen Ron Thomson and Mike Patterson to his roster for the game, as well as the high-scoring junior varsity line of Chuck Mercer, Dick Blakey, and Mike Tyler.

He hopes that the team will gain experience from this game. That they need it badly was evident from their performance in the Clarkson game Thursday night.

"We Made Mistakes"

"We need some improvement," Weiland said. "We made some costly mistakes, but I expected that. We weren't pressed as hard against Bowdoin as in the Clarkson game, and I don't think we deserved to win; we were taking too long to shoot. When we did, we couldn't find the cage. I will keep changing lines until I come up with something."

The most consistent line on the ice in the first two games has been the Tom Heintzman, Dean Alpine, Chris Norris combination. They have been forechecking and backchecking well. Their passing has been accurate and they have played their positions.

The other lines have not been as consistent. They have been bunching around center ice, leaving the wings open and missing parses. At other times the players have not looked up from their sticks and have lost the puck to alert opponents.

One of Harvard's biggest troubles thus far has been maintaining a tight defense. They have been committing themselves too quickly, allowing the opposing forwards clear shots at the net. Three of the five Clarkson goals were scored because of this weakness. In fact, after the game, Weiland commented, "If it hadn't been for our goalie, Bland, in the third period, we might have come off much worse."

Bland Makes Late Saves

In the first two periods of the Clarkson game, however, Bland did not look like the Bland of last season, when he was selected to the All-East team. He didn't come into his own until the third period when he stopped close-in shots on three separate occasions.