Most of the year it's been close for the Harvard hockey team. A goal here, a break there, and maybe things could have been different.

Not last night. Last night there occurred, before a raucous sell-out crowd at Lynah Rink in Ithaca, N.Y., The Blowout. Cornell scored three quick goals within two minutes just to show the Crimson who was boss and who would experience the ECAC play-offs vicariously, then added five more in the opening stanza on the way to a leisurely 11-3 rout.

Stiff Fish

The Crimson came out as lively as the dead fish that fans later tossed on the ice, allowing the Big Red to swarm around John Hynes and blast 23 shots in the first 20 minutes on the befuddled senior netminder.

Cornell led, 8-1 after one period, and perhaps Bill Cleary's overmatched squad should have quietly skated off the ice right then and taken the next DC-7 to Logan Airport. For four and a half minutes, the Crimson held gamely to a scoreless tie, but then the humiliation began. Aided by linemate and perennial all-star Lance Nethery, sophomore winger Brock Treadway netted two quickies, at 4:23 and 5:56, on the way to his fifth hattrick of the season and second in a row against Harvard. Treadway, who now leads the ECAC with 28 tallies, completed his three-goal performance with 18:28 left in the game when he drove a slapshot past freshman goalie Giff Duffy. Duffy had replaced Hynes after the opening period disaster, and turned in a respectable performance.

Len Jankowski knocked in a rebound for his first career goal to give the Big Red a 3-0 lead before a non sequitur briefly interrupted the festivities--Jon Garrity inched the puck past Brain Hayward at 9:34 to give Harvard the cheap thrill of trailing Cornell by only two goals.

Mercy!

But even that paltry accomplishment proved short-lived as the Big Red's line of Doug Berk, John Olds and Brian Marrett soon combined for two goals in nine seconds. First Olds and Berk set up Marrett, then Marrett and Olds set up Berk. Rob Gemmell (shorthanded), Tom Whitehead and Jim Gibson, aided by weak defensive play around the Harvard net and unsteady goaltending by Hynes, all scored before the period, mercifully, came to an end.

Harvard gave new meaning to the words "futile gesture" as it cut the gap to 8-3 in the first three minutes of period two--Millen converted a rebound on a George Hughes post-puncher and freshman Dave Burke, who now leads the Crimson in goals with 15, put home a snapshot from the right face-off circle. Equlibrium was restored on Doug Berk's second marker of the evening, a tip-in of Gemmell's slapper from the point at 10:29.

The game long decided, Big Red rooters risked the referee's wrath as they tossed a smorgasbord of seafood and fowl--some as energetic as backskating defensemen--on to the ice before the third period started. Cornell was in fact assessed a delay of game penalty, but Treadway took advantage of it to score a shorthanded goal. Nethery, who with 51 points is one behind Treadway in the scoring race, grabbed his sixteenth goal at 10:23 to complete the scoring.

All that remained in the game was a brawl between Alan Litchfield and Cornell's John Olds--each received roughing majors and highsticking minors. All that remains in the season, fortunately, is a week and a half.