Last year at this time Bill Cleary's icemen were packing up for home and the annual Yule festivities with a spotless, undefeated, untied record through five contests. The squad had outscored its opponents by a whopping 35-14 and ranked number one in the East and number two in the nation. There would be no coal in the icemen's stockings.

This season the squad had better ask Santa for a few lucky breaks--they'll be sorely needed in this year's wild ECAC Division One race. The Harvard hockey team enters vacation with a mediocre 4-3 record, having scored 35 goals, but having yielded 26.

The record puts the Crimson in a tie for seventh place in ECAC's Division One with Princeton (I kid you not, Harvard and Princeton are tied, really). Harvard is nowhere to be found in the latest A.P. major college poll top ten.

A few lousy goals separate Harvard from a 4-3 and a 7-0 season stat. Winning goals by BU's Mike Eruzione, Dartmouth's Peter Quinn and UNH Jamie Hislop have put the Crimson in the loss column three times.

The first loss of the season, in the Crimson's opener at UNH does not look bad in retrospect. At the time it may have seemed ludicrous that Harvard should lose to a team it trounced last year 9-3. But so far this season the Wildcats have lost only twice against eight wins and lead the division with a 5-0 record. The team has climbed to number four in the national rankings.

According to the preseason prognosticists, New Hampshire is not supposed be leading the division; Cornell is. But the Big Red have had a perfect season marred by a tie with hapless St. Lawrence, which stands only ahead of Brown in Division One with a 1-4-1 showing. The tie, against three victories, puts Cornell in third place behind RPI.

But then that's the beauty of ECAC hockey, predicting the top five finishes in order is about as easy as defeating UCLA's hoop squad with a pick-up team. I hate to admit it, but that old cliche, beaten to death by every division coach I've talked to holds true: Any Division One team can beat any other division team on any given night. Uggh!

Dartmouth wasn't supposed to beat BU or Harvard, but with a little luck and a goaltender named Chuck Walker the Big Green have two wins in Division One. Brown's only victory of the season has been the only loss for Boston College, ranked tenth in the country. Who would have predicted that St. Lawrence would tie Cornell in Ithaca? Or that Princeton would have won four games so far?

This is supposed to be a rebuilding year this year for Cleary as he tries to make up for the losses on defense and the graduation of the Local Line, but nobody was predicting a 4-3 record before the Cornell game. It shows what a few bad breaks and a couple of sloppy plays can do.