Big Red Melts Icemen, 6-1, With Aid From Unruly Crowd

The Harvard hockey team spent most of Tuesday night stranded by the side of a road outside Albany, N.Y., when the bus that was supposed to take them to Cornell took a five-hour nap in the snow.

But the icemen would have preferred a full week there in Metroland to what happened when they finally did arrive in Ithaca: a fired-up, physical Big Red squad and a hostile, unruly crowd combined to swamp the Crimson, 6-1, last night at Lynah Hall.

Go Fish

Last year, the Cornell fans blew the game open between the second and third periods when they showered Harvard players with foot-long fish. This time, their heroes did it for them as Dan Duffy, Brian Marrett and Ken Kirley all tallied first-period goals and freshman goaltender Darren Eliot limited the icemen to a lone score by Greg Britz at 14:10, placing the Crimson at a two-goal deficit they never made up.

Despite the score, the icemen--now 6-8-1 in ECAC play--dominated just as much of the first period as Cornell did and even outshot the Big Red by one. However, things went downhill from there: Larry Tobin hit the post twice within fifteen seconds early in the second stanza; and Cornell was off and running. Brock Tredway notched his 16th tally of the year at 12:38, and Karl Habib chimed in with a contribution at 4:04 to widen the margin to 5-1.

During period two the Big Red dominated play as well as the scoreboard. The Crimson had trouble getting the puck out of its own zone, setting up attacks while crossing the blueline, covering the speedy wings Big Red coach Dick Bertrand had shooting on goalie Wade Lau all night, and--most of all--converting the few real opportunities they did have into goals. The telling statistic: a 14-5 Cornell advantage in shots on goal for the period.

The Lynah Hall masses stuck to minnows for this year's between-periods floor show (although they did perform the fabled tie-the-chicken-to-the-goalpost routine for the umpteenth year), and the Big Red stuck to its potent passing offense in the third. Tobin notched a final goal at 7:13 and Cornell coasted the rest of the way to the tune of "Goodbye Harvard, we hate to see you go," as sung by the Ithaca Section 19 choir.

THE NOTEBOOK: The win put Cornell in the eighth and final playoff spot for the time being, and dropped Harvard to ninth place in the ECAC. But the icemen can get right back into the race this weekend, when they travel to Yale Saturday and then face Colgate at home.