Falling From the Heavens

The Harvard men's hockey team is still number one--at least until Monday night.

Four days from now, the new national rankings will come out. And there's a good chance that Harvard will not be sitting on top.

If that is the case, it was a glorious three-week stay at number one for the first Harvard team ever to achieve that honor. The WMEB/CHSB poll looked so perfect: Harvard (15-0), with 15 of 15 possible first-place votes.

The Crimson should remain in the top five despite Tuesday's 4-2 loss to Yale. This week's two through four spots were taken by former number ones--Michigan State, North Dakota, and Boston College.

It's the ECAC that matters most at this point in the season, and this week's standings show Harvard comfortably on top with a 13-1 mark, with eight league games remaining. Six of those games are at Bright Center.

NFL Commisioner Pete Rozelle would be proud of the parity in the ECAC this season. Behind Harvard in the league is Yale, with a 7-2 record. Colgate and St. Lawrence--in third place--have six wins. Four teams are bunched together with five wins, while two more have four each.

Except for Yale and Colgate, which have played only nine and eight conference games, respectively, all the other teams have at least five league defeats.

Colgate has been playing impressive hockey recently. The ninth-ranked Red Raiders beat Cornell, RPI and Vermont last weekend to improve their overall record to 12-3.

Halfway to Detroit: Harvard's 16 games mark the halfway point of the season--provided that the Crimson reaches the NCAA semi-finals in Detroit in March. After the Yale game, the Crimson entered its traditional three-week layoff for its other finals.

So this is an opportune time to recount some of the highlights from individual games in the first half of this storybook season:

Team scoring : Highest output--8-3 over Dartmouth, November 28. Lowest output--Tuesday's 4-2 loss to the Bulldogs.

Team defense: One shutout (Dickie McEvoy) and four one-point games (three by McEvoy, one by John Devin).

Individual scoring: Hat-tricks by Pete Chiarelli and Tim Barakett, four-point efforts by Allen Bourbeau, Lane MacDonald, Randy Taylor, Barakett and Mark Benning.

Individual defense: Most saves, Devin, 29 (twice).

Game winning goals: Barakett, seven.

Most total points by a freshman: C.J. Young's nine is one more than Tod Hartje's eight.

Best band and crowd cheer: A perennial favorite: "Hey RPI, you're just a bunch of MIT rejects...and MIT sucks!" Another: "Hey Schwalb, you're not a goalie, you're a Q-Tip!" isn't so funny anymore. The Yale netminder recorded 38 saves in Yale's triumph over Harvard Tuesday.

Best prediction: Barakett's statement that the Yale game at Ingalls Rink should be the toughest ECAC game of the season.

Worst defeat administered to Harvard by a former captain of Harvard's best post-war team (21-3-2, 1962-'63): Yale's Tim Taylor, 4-2.

Messuri's Missiles: Princeton sophomore John Messuri, with 26 points, has taken over first place in the ECAC scoring race. Harvard's Barakett, with 25 conference points, and MacDonald, with 24, stand second and third.

Barakett and MacDonald are tied for first, however, with 14 league goals apiece.

MacDonald's 17 total goals give him an average of 1.1 goals per game. Tim Smith, last year's Crimson leader, tallied 28 goals in 34 contests.

Before the Yale game, Harvard's incredible pair of netminders, Devin and McEvoy, claimed first and second places in the conference goals-against-average race.

McEvoy has since slipped into the fourth position, but the duo's combined 2.00 g.a.a. is still 0.47 better than that of last year's national g.a.a.-leader, Crimson goalie Grant Blair.

Layoff lag: Since 1953, Harvard is only 20-14 in the first game after its three-week break.

This season, the Crimson's first post-break contest is also the first game of the Beanpot, on February 2. If Harvard is to have any chance of winning its first all-Boston tournament since 1981, it will have to improve on its 5-5 record in Beanpot contests played immediately after the break.

Northeastern, the Crimson's first-round opponent, sports a 5-13-3 record, and is fifth in the seven-team Hockey East. If all goes well, Harvard will face the fourth-ranked B.C. Eagles in the Championship Round a week later.