They've Broken Up That Old Gang Out West

After dropping a game 3-2 to the Minnesota Gophers in late December, Harvard Hockey Coach Cooney Weiland had some on-the-line things to say about the Wild-West style of play of the Western Intercollegiate Hockey League. In tones of deep-seated displeasure, Coach Weiland laid down: "It wouldn't be tolerated in the East. The way it was played Saturday night you might as well use picks and shovels for hockey sticks. No hockey player worth the name will complain about a legitimate body check in the open. But when they charge a guy into the fence, put elbows and sticks in his face, use threatening gestures, and molest a player when he doesn't have the puck, it is time to call a halt."

Weiland and his easterners are entitled to their indictment, but it is an opinion altogether wasted on the western hockey fans. Indeed, it is doubtful that he could have found even one sympathetic listener among the thousands that crowded into the University of Denver's big arena or the Broadmoor Ice Palace in Colorado Springs last weekend. To those screaming fans, the fierce, brawling Canadian-style hockey that put Denver's Pioneers and Colorado's Tigers in a three-way tie with North Dakota was the best collegiate hockey being played in the U.S. And, as they had no concern for the method of the game, they had none for the fact that nearly every player was the product of such places as Portage La Prairie in Manitoba and Moose Jaw in Saskatchewan. Unfortunately, however this last is resting uneasy with many league members. In January, the Big Ten members of the WIHL—Michigan, Michigan State and Minnesota—announced they were withdrawing from the league. Later, Michigan Tech said it was leaving too.

The dispute breaking up the seven-year-old league is primarily because all but one of the teams are almost wholly Canadian and they cannot exist without constant importations from north of the border. In addition, the league, composed of seven teams from five different conferences, has always been an unwieldy, synthetic affair, racked by distrust and dissatisfaction since it was born in 1951.

There is no doubt about Canadian domination. But there is also no doubt these young Canadians are entirely responsible for the superior brand of hockey played by western teams. The seven teams have 150 players certified for eligibility, and of this number 109 are Canadians and 41 are listed as American. And certainly, some of these latter may have stepped across the line fairly recently to such places as International Falls, Minn. The University of Denver has 17 Canadians and one American; Colorado College has 18 Canadians and one American; North Dakota has 13 Canadians and three Americans; the University of Michigan has 17 Canadians and one American; Michigan State has 18 Canadians and eight Americans; Michigan College of Mining and Technology has 23 Canadians and two Americans. The University of Minnesota, coached by John Mariucci, an American who has been critical of the league and its Canadian domination, has but three Canadians and 19 Americans. Mariucci is among those who feel that many of the Canadian players have more at stake than college competition and that the WIHL may be in a sense a farm league for pro hockey. In a recent statement Mariucci summed it up: "You can't tell me that some players have not gone to professional tryout camps and had their expenses paid."

Actually, the incident that triggered the Big Ten withdrawal occurred in March 1957, when Colorado College raised a question regarding the eligibility of three Michigan players—John Randall, Neill Buchanan and Wally Maxwell—all of whom were declared ineligible by the NCAA eligibility committee on the eve of the national tournament in Colorado Springs. There were threats then to break up the league. Big Ten policymakers, who had not paid too much attention to hockey, took a long look at the WIHL and decided it was not for them. There were a number of other reasons: the difference in size and prestige of the schools, constantly mounting pressure for more American players, lack of league leadership and finally a Big Ten rule which provides that a player who is over 19 when he matriculates loses one year of competition for each year he is past 19. Interestingly enough, the rule applies only to foreign-born students.

Denver, Colorado College, Michigan Tech and North Dakota, where hockey is a major winter attraction and hence a high-revenue sport, feel that the age rule is aimed straight at their use of Canadian players.

The University of Denver's dapper 41-year-old Coach Murray Armstrong, a veteran of 10 years of professional hockey with New York, Syracuse and Detroit and coach of the Regina team in the Western Canada Junior Hockey League for nine years, was indignant about the Big Ten rule. When it was brought up, he said angrily:

"The usual reason for an age rule is to protect younger boys from more mature players. But in this case the Big Ten wants to protect players only from mature foreign students. If an American student is older that is quite all right. We just cannot go along with this type of discrimination at all. If the rule were applied to all sports and to Americans as well as foreign students we would be glad to comply. Western League hockey is top-grade hockey because we do have Canadian players. Our players are attending the University of Denver because they want educations. They are good students, and they are not here just to play hockey. But they are good players; most have been playing since they were children."

Armstrong's counterpart at Colorado College this year, Coach Tom R. Bedecki, 28, a husky 6-foot-2, 200-pound native of Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, resigned a couple of days after Michigan Tech withdrew and said he would probably return to school for an advanced degree when his current coaching assignment ends. He agrees with Armstrong that Canadians are a necessity and that their presence in force in the Western League has provided followers of the game with a better brand of hockey than that offered in the East.

"Canadians are better hockey players than Americans, not because they are better athletes, but because they are trained in it from childhood, just as many American boys play baseball from the time they are small," he said. "You don't find in this country a sandlot type of hockey, and not many American high schools offer hockey as a sport. Where they do, a boy usually gets to play about 20 games a year for three years. When he comes to college he has played maybe 60 games. But the Canadian boys start playing as young as seven or eight. There are a number of different divisions for youngsters, and finally they play five years of competitive hockey at the rate of about 40 games a year. When they come to us, they have had about 200 games under their belts. They know how to play hockey."