Hey, if Jackie Hughes makes this much of a difference, then he should bag life at Harvard and report straightaway to Boston Garden.

In other words, losing one great defenseman does not usually result in a respectable team getting their zambonis kicked by a squad they haven't lost to in over a decade.

But you can throw out all the theorems and can all the corollaries about what should happen when Harvard plays a hockey game, any game. Nothing mattered last night, and just about nothing worked, and the Harvard hockey team now has the rest of reading period and all exam time to attempt to swallow the bitter 14-5 trouncing it took last evening at the hands of the Bionic Huskies of Northeastern.

It was an embarrasment. It was a disgrace. It accumulated to 25 goals scored on the Crimson in the last two games, over a fourth of what the team gave up all last year. And believe it or not, it was the first time in this band-aid kind of season that Harvard has lost two games in a row. (Of course, we haven't let the 11-3 humiliation to Boston College slip our minds yet, have we?). But most of all, it was just a damn shame.

Get the Blues

You can look at the defense first and point all the accusing fingers and you wouldn't be all together right. Sure, the Harvard crease could have been nicknamed the Huskie Bus Station after all the Northeastern players who would park themselves there, and sure, the backliners were pretty sorry at clearing the puck out of the zone all night. However, most of the N.U. goals came on excellent shots off of excellent plays, and as for the Crimson offense, too many times it sputtered and had to rely on one individual to do the work of a handful.

The funny thing is that it's not hard to look for the Harvard stand outs in a game such as this, for they usually show through despite the circus going on around them.

John Cochrane played one of his finest games of the season. Alternating at forward and defense, Cochrane picked up his sixth goal of the year along with two assists and added some solid forechecking.

Also add Gene Purdy's name to the list. The junior forward should not have dressed for tonight's game, yet his hustle was ever-present and he managed a goal and an assist.

Other Harvard tallies were by Steve Andrews from John Garrity at 13:18 of the third period, Bobby Kelley, his first, from Andrews and Cochrane at 8:29 of the third, and George Hughes from Purdy and Cochrane at 18:46 of the second.

The Northeastern story goes something like this: 3-0 at the end of one on goals by Jim Walsh, Mark Derby, and Larry Parks; 8-3 after two (It was a ball game after five minutes at 4-2, but that's it.) with scores coming from Mark Simmons, Dave Wilkins, Parks again, and two by Dale Ferdinandi.

Rampage

It was 13-5 in the third after Parks and Ferdinandi had both scored two more (giving them both four on the night) and freshman Doug Harvey added another, and then I just stopped scoring. Someone got the fourteenth goal, though.

The game, if anything else, marked a couple of firsts for Harvard coach Billy Cleary. This was the first time he has ever lost to Northeastern (He carried a ten-game streak into last night's clash), and likewise, the first time in his career he's probably welcomed Harvard's strange tradition of post-vacation exams.

At any rate, the icemen are idle until February 4, when they'll resume the wars with Princeton at Watson, hopefully with the likes of Bryan Cook, Paul Yeomalakis, Bobby McDonald, Murray Dea, and Bobby Fowkes joining the ranks.

Two days after the Princeton tilt comes the opening round of the Beanpot against (yep) Northeastern, and you can bet things won't be the same.

THE NOTEBOOK: Coach Cleary will need all Exam Period to decide which of his two goaltenders to support. Brian Murphy and John Hynes have both looked equally depressing of late.

Franco Scalamandre, playing with a broken nose last night, had to wear a protective screen attached to his helmet during the game. The lanky defenseman looked like a bird feeder on skates.