Crimson Six Edge Penn, 7-6, In Wild Ivy League Thriller

Saturday night's game between the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard was a far cry from the Crimson's earlier 9-1 thrashing of the Quakers in December. Penn, spurred by a noisy home crowd, gave the Crimson all it could handle before going down to a close 7-6 defeat.

Heart-Stopping

It was a great game for the fans, with plenty of fast action and lots of scoring, but enough to give the coaches heart attacks. The contest was tied five times going right down to the last minute, when Penn pulled goalie Tim McQuiston for a sixth skater. But the Crimson, and especially Joe Bertagna, who made quite a few sterling saves in the game, hung on for the win.

The Crimson started the opening period looking much the same as they did against B.U. and Vermont. Penn jumped out to a 2-0 lead on goals by Gordon Halliday and Peter Leef. Halliday's tally at 4:47 came on a freak deflection off his stick as he and Bob Muse were jamming in front of the net.

Harvard came back strong to tie the game and go ahead on goals by Bob Goodenow, Ted Thorndike and Bob McManama. All three scored with less than two minutes left in the period. McManama's go-ahead score came at 19:58 on a "thread the needle" pass from Larry Desmond.

The middle stanza started out slowly with both teams beginning to get more physical. With Penn playing two men up, Penn's All-East defenseman Mike Hubbert tied the game at 11:22, only to see Harvard go back in front on McManama's second of the night a minute later.

Halliday notched his second just 20 seconds after that and it looked as if the period would end in a deadlock. But Jim McMahon won a faceoff to the right of McQuiston at 19:08, fed it to Thorndike who was positioned out in front, Esposito style--and Ted put Harvard ahead once again.

The Quakers took advantage of two power-play situations in the third to grab their fifth and sixth goals and give them a one goal margin. Bill McDonnell lit the lamp at 2:22 and Leef got what then seemed to the game winner at 10:05, with Doug Elliott out on a ludicrous tripping call by the referee.

Winning Goals

As was the case in the preceding two periods, the Crimson struck late in the stanza and came up with goals by Leigh Hogan and Dave Gauthier to seize victory from the scrappy Quakers. Hogan's tying score at 15:31 was only his second goal of the year, as he was called from the bench to play in the place of Randy Roth, who was sent out on a ten minute misconduct. The winning tally came on a nice backhand shot by Gauthier from about five feet out at 16:56.