Hockey Suspension

Harvard hockey coach Cooney Weiland deserves praise for suspending three Harvard players involved in a series of fights in the Beanpot finals against Boston University a week ago.

Weiland could have redressed the harm of adverse publicity simply by suspending the players for several days. In fact, B.U. coach Jack Kelly had publicly requested that the Harvard players be reinstated for the Cornell game, Saturday. Instead, to provide an example and to teach his team a lesson, Weiland held the suspension through the Cornell game. In so doing, he endangered Harvard's chances for a major upset and a first-division finish in the Ivy League. But more important he refused to sacrifice sports ethics and behavior for wins.

As the game turned out, Harvard won an overtime victory without the three players, and without costly skirmishes, against a team equally rough and fast as the B.U. team. It was a spectacular, though somewhat trite lesson in concentrating on the game rather than fisticuffs.

Hockey, a sport of loose pucks, flying sticks, and difficult manuvers, is basically frustrating to the participant, especially when his team is on the short end of the scoreboard. It is not surprising that the last major brawl during a Harvard hockey game occurred during a 7-2 loss to Toronto in the 1959 Christmas Tournament, or that Brown's Bill McSween drew a suspension last week from Coach John Fullerton for fighting during a 4-1 losing effort against Cornell.

Conflicts are bound to break out occasionally during hockey games. Secondary schools protect the sport by an automatic one-game suspension for any participant in a fight; colleges believe the sport is sufficiently clean to make such a rigid rule unnecessary. It is the occasional disciplinary action, such as Weiland's voluntary decision, which allows the colleges to follow this policy.