Scorecard

SOME CHANGES MADE

With the National Hockey League season upon us, it might be well to take note of three rules changes that have been adopted.

The first change requires the presence of a reserve goaltender, fully dressed in pads, chest protector and other gear, on the bench for all 70 games. There have been occasions in the past when the home team has had to supply a fill-in goalie when the opposition's goaltender was injured. The quality of the standby goalie often was suspect, since he usually was not a topflight professional or even good minor league material. A few years ago Ross Wilson, Detroit trainer, went into the nets against his own club after Boston Goalie Don Simmons was injured.

The warmup procedure will be different, too. Previously both teams went on the ice at the same time, took their skating and shooting practice, retired to their dressing rooms while new ice was made, then started the game. Now the home team is required to get on the ice 45 minutes before opening face-off, skate for 15 minutes, then allow the visiting team to do the same. The change would seem to deprive the home team of some of the advantage of playing before its own fans and that 30-minute cool-off after the warmup does not sound helpful.

The third change will assess an automatic $200 fine against "any player who swings his stick at another player in the course of any altercation." Stick fighting has been on the increase in the NHL in recent seasons. A $200 fine would seem to be healthily discouraging.

BUCKMANSHIP

Truth in hunting is as rare as truth in fishing. The deer, or the bass, is always bigger in the telling than in the weighing. Now Kenneth A. Casavant of Roslindale, Mass. has come up with a device that, without scales, will permit a hunter to gauge the weight of his deer, dressed or undressed, with reasonable accuracy.

Some 18 years ago Casavant saw a farmer measuring the girth of a cow by stretching a tape around it just back of the forelegs. The farmer said the girth would tell him the cow's weight. As a hunter, Casavant thought the same idea might be applied to deer. He spent a lot of time in cold storage plants, measuring and weighing deer that were kept in them. After examining about 300 deer, he finally established a relationship between girth and weight. Then, doing research at the Boston Public Library, he discovered a method by which he could make a correlation between the dressed and the undressed weight of a deer. He thereupon made up a tape measure that tells the dressed weight on one side, the undressed weight on the other. Last fall, hunting in the Allagash region of Maine, he got 19 requests for the loan of his tape measure. Casavant decided to market it.

It is not exactly selling like hot cakes. Quite a few hunters, it would appear, would rather make a generous guess.

A FEW WORDS FOR BOXING