Hockey Team Beats Boston College 4-1; Depth, Defense Contribute to Team Win

Harvard's crack hockey team came through when it counted last night, taking a 4-1 victory from highly-touted Boston College.

Incredible depth and near-perfect covering on the Eagle's two or three excellent players were the keys to the Crimson win. Harvard scored first as an overflow crowd saw Dave Johnson blast the puck in from left defense, and before the B.C. first line's clockwork produced any effect, the third period was a quarter over and the Crimson four goals ahead.

Bill Beckett added another first period score, and Jim Dwinell tallied twice in the second period to round out the varsity's scoring. Beckett had assists on both of Dwinell's goals, but got his own counter on a Dwinell pass.

Johnston's goal followed half a period of scary hockey for the Crimson. B.C. controlled the puck solidly for the first two minutes, and with Harvard a man short on a penalty capped two close misses with a shot that bounced off the post. But with Ted Ingall's clearing pass, the Crimson began to roll, and even got a good shot off before the penalty had elapsed.

On the scoring play, Johnston momentarily lost control of a pass from a pile-up to the right of the B.C. cage, but quickly moved forward a few feet, picked up the puck, and put a low, hard shot past goalie Jim Logue, Ingalls and Tom Heintzman had assists on the play.

Minutes later Dwinell passed back to Dave Grannis, who got off a shot from about 30 ft. out. Beckett tipped it in for the second Crimson score. With only seconds remaining in the period, the Eagles' all-American defenseman Red Martin came down his own right board, stick-handled past four Crimson players, and laid a perfect pass on the stick of first-line wing Jack Leetch. From ten feet out, Leetch missed the cage.

Before a minute of the second period had gone by, Beckett flipped an unsuccessful shot by Dave Morse out from behind the cage. When Dwinnell got to it, the puck was sitting on the ice, about four feet out. Logue had just gone down to block a shot his defensemen managed to prevent. Dwinell put it past him easily.

The Crimson scored its last goal halfway through the period, when Beckett fired a perfect pass some 30 feet straight down the rink to Dwinnell, who had enough of a jump on the defense to get off the scoring shot.

Martin subsequently came through with another impressive dribbling exhibition, but Crimson goalie Bob Bland uncorked one of the best of an evening's worth of fine saves to stop him. Though the puck eventually went into the cage, the goal was disallowed because it bounced off Martin's skate. For the game, Bland had 27 saves, many in two-on-one situations within a few feet of the cage, Logue stopped 22 shots.

Most of the action in the final period was in Bland's end of the rink, but on very few occasions did the Crimson defense allow the Eagles a clear shot. Their lone goal came when passes by Leetch and Jim Daley set up Owen Hughes in front of the cage.

The question for the rest of the game was not whether B.C. would win, but whether or not they would be able to score.