Icemen Get USSR Vote

If it seems these notebooks have been little more than cheering sections for the Harvard men's hockey team, blame the players themselves--they've done very little wrong so far this season.

The numbers have been chronicled before, but it's worth repeating that this 13-0 Crimson squad is the first to be ranked number one in the country, has tied a 50-year-old record for consecutive victories at the start of the season, and has broken a 23-year-old record with its 23rd straight game at Bright Center without a loss.

It's an impressive list of accomplishments.

Even the Russians agree.

Tim Barakett reported that the Moscow Spartak team told the Crimson that Harvard was the best squad the Muscovites faced on their American tour, and that included some AHL minor league teams and the Hockey East All-Stars.

The Big Three: But this year's squad does have a new and improved Lane MacDonald and Barakett.

MacDonald Mania hit a high point before Saturday's Vermont game. At that time, the junior left-wing was leading the nation with a 1.45 goals-per-game average. He was shut out in the Catamount contest, but came back to notch two assists in the RPI game. The Mequon, Wisc. native's name is being mentioned prominently as a Hobey Baker Award candidate.

Barakett, MacDonald's right-wing partner, had a sterling weekend, with a hat trick Saturday and a total of seven points in the two games. He cruised past the career 100-point mark and is second among active Crimson players to MacDonald's 125.

Meanwhile, Allen Bourbeau is lurking in third place among Harvard's leading scorers, with 20 points, behind MacDonald's 27 and Barakett's 25. The first-line center has yet to score in a non-power play situation.

Despite all the talk about Harvard's more balanced scoring attack this season, the statistics show that these three have scored a higher percentage of their team's goals than the top three did last year. Mac-Donald, Barakett and Bourbeau have tallied 54 percent of Harvard's 68 goals, while last year's top three--Tim Smith, Scott Fusco, and Bourbeau--scored only 41 percent of the 187 goals.

And last year's fourth line, Pete Follows, Greg Chalmers, and Pete Chiarelli, got 8 percent of the team's points, while this year's fourth line, Craig Taucher, John Murphy, and Andy Janfanza, have scored just 4 percent of the points.

Elsewhere in College Hockey: Yes, there are other teams out there, though it's hard to tell by looking at the ECAC standings. Only Harvard, Yale, Colgate and the Crimson's next opponent, St. Lawrence, have winning league records.

Harvard has been so dominant that the Boston Globe has begun referring to the league as "The Big One and the little eleven."

After Friday's match at St. Lawrence, the Crimson travel to Potsdam, N.Y. to face Clarkson. The Golden Knights were the last ECAC team to defeat the Crimson, in the conference semi-finals last March.

That blow, coming two weeks after Clarkson beat Harvard in the regular-season finale, was expected to knock Harvard out of the NCAA tournament. But the Crimson gained a spot anyway, and justified the choice by finishing second in the country.

Clarkson is in the midst of its first four-game losing streak in three years, but that will probably be ended Friday when the Knights face Dartmouth.

Dartmouth, with an 0-9 record, is suffering through its worst campaign in history. That is despite the fact that the Big Green is Harvard's travelling partner throughout the ECAC, and thus faces each opponent's inferior goaltender while the best are rested for the Crimson.

The Best of the Rest: Michigan State was knocked off the nation's top perch during the holidays by a 7-3 defeat to Western Michigan in the first round of the Great Lakes Invitational. Following Harvard in the latest WMPL/WZRK Radio Poll are Minnesota (20-5), North Dakota (18-6), the Spartans (20-4-1), Boston College (14-4), Bowling Green (19-4-1), Lowell (14-3-1), Maine (11-6-2), Wisconsin (13-10-1), and Denver (12-9-2).