Icemen Demolish Big Bad Bruins, 6-1 Brown Picks Up More Penalties Than Shots

If Harvard had played last night's hockey game without a goalie, Brown would have won it by only five goals. The Bruins could manage only 11 shots on net the entire evening, as the Crimson skated to an easy 6-1 victory in Watson Rink.

Brown picked up more penalties than shots, nabbing 11 two-minute penalties, a ten minute misconduct to All-American defenseman Keith Smith, and a game misconduct to forward Dick Gamble, who was ejected with only six seconds left in the game for malicious use of his stick on the face of Harvard's Kevin Burke.

The elbows flew fast and furiously in the first period, as Brown played its usual scrappy, physical style of hockey. The referees, however, must have been lulled to sleep by the Bruin offense, which did not get a shot on net in the opening period. The refs called only three penalties in the stanza, two on Harvard.

The Crimson icemen seemed content to practice their passing in the period, and worked the puck around for a mere eight shots on Brown goalie Dave Sagaser. The only shot to go in was a well-placed zinger by Kevin Carr with only a second remaining in the period.

The game began to get out of the referees' hands in the second period, as they seemed to be trying to make up for the calls they missed the period before. Brown was handed three successive, and overlapping cross-checking penalties starting at 5:26 of the stanza. At 8:11, as the Bruins were still playing a man short, Randy Roth got the goal that broke the game open for Harvard.

Leigh Hogan, Ted Thorndike, and Kevin Carr made it 5-0 by 13:59. Jimmy Thomas deserves a lot of credit for setting the third and fourth Harvard goals. His pass to Hogan, who made it 3-0, came while he was off-balance with a Brown player all over him and on his way to a collision with the boards.

Gamble, the villain of the third period, converted Brown's second shot on Jim Murray for the Bruins' only tally at 15:15 of the second. The goal came with the Crimson on the power play, as Bob Thornton won the faceoff in the Harvard zone and Gamble took the slapper for the score. Brown went on to force Murray to make three more saves before the stanza ended.

Ten minutes and five penalties into the final period, Harvard capped the scoring with its second power play tally. Carr came down the left side with the puck and Sagaser came way out of the net to try and block the breakaway. Kevin calmly flipped the puck across to a waiting Steve Dagdigian who fired it into the open net.

Coach Billy Cleary then replaced Murray, who saw harder shots in the pregame warm-ups, with John Aiken for the final ten minutes. While Sagaser was forced to turn aside 36 shots in the game, Murray saved but nine and Aiken faced all of one shot while on the ice.

Brown capped its "bad boy" performance at 19:54 of the final period, as Gamble took the stick to Burke's face. Gamble, and the Bruins, left the ice to a barrage of booing and obscenities from the irate crowd.