Tonight is it--the one Saturday night of the year when there's something worthwhile going on in New Haven. It's the Harvard-Yale hockey game, which not too many years ago ranked up there with such great mismatches as Coyote vs. the Road Runner and Snoopy vs. the cat next door.

The Elis used to epitomize ineptitude when it came to hockey. In two seasons in the mid-'70s they racked up an ECAC record of 1-30-1. But in 1976 they looked to Harvard for help, hiring Tim Taylor '63 away from his job as coach Bill Cleary's assistant.

Two years ago, Yale took the Ivy title, and in the last two years finished one game out of playoff position.

Last February, the Bulldogs--led by Paul Tortorella's sensational goaltending--took a 5-3 decision at Ingalls Rink, also known as "the Yale whale" for its humped roof. Tonight's rematch is at the 9000-seat New Haven Coliseum, famous as one of the world's ugliest buildings. The Yale ticket office expects the Coliseum to be more than half-filled.

Coach Taylor, who attended his alma mater's 4-3 triumph over Clarkson last Sunday at Bright, always speaks admiringly of his former boss's team. "I saw two very good teams last Sunday," he said yesterday. "Harvard's got probably the fastest skating team in the league."

Fern Flaman, whose Northeastern squad broke Yale's five-game winning streak last Tuesday, said of the Elis, "I've never seen so many big players: they look almost like a professional team." And Taylor admits to putting brawn to good use: "I think we have some good decent size. We're going to try to skate with Harvard as much as possible, though we'll take the body where that's appropriate and skate for the openings when we can."

Besides Tortorella, the Elis most worth watching are the big guns on its starting line: Bob Brooke, the highest scorer in Yale history, and his wingers, Mark Crerar and Bob Logan.

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Some gems from Thursday's pre-Beanpot luncheon at the Garden:

Jack Parker, coach of defending champion B.U., on how often the Beanpot changes hands: "If I remember correctly, no team has repeated since '78 and '79; that was B.U. And before then I think it was last done in '70 through '73, and I think that was B.U., too. And before then I think it was '66, '67 and 68; something tells me that was B.U. also."

The Beanpot's elder statesman, B.C. Coach Emeritus John (Snooks) Kelley, poking fun at the Jesuit school in Chestnut Hill "Tickets are so hard to get that you have to know the Pope to get a ticket; you have to know Lenny (Ceglarski, B.C.'s current coach) to know the Pope."

Things will be a little more serious come 6:15 p.m. Monday.