Hockey Begins

Sharp steel cut deep in cloudy ice as agile sinews swung hooked stick at elusive puck. Hooked stick is shorter this year, limited to 53 inches, instead of 60. Overtime allowance has been cut from 20 to 10 minutes. Abolished are penalty free shots. There are other minor changes. Otherwise the professional hockey season opened last week to frantic crowds in U. S. and Canadian cities much as it closed last April when Ottawa won the world's championship from Boston.

Hockey is to Canada what baseball is to the U. S., what bridge is to a bored woman, what boule* is to southern France, what slogans are to cigarets. Two years ago Tex Rickard decided that hockey should also be made necessary to Manhattan. He included an ice manufactury in his vast Madison Square Garden and imported hockey in life-size lots from Canada.

There is a National League; ten teams divided into the International Division (Montreal Canadiens, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, New York Americans) and the American Division (New York Rangers, Detroit, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Boston). In March the first three teams in the International play for the O'Brien Cup; the first three in the American for the Prince of Wales Cup; respectively emblematic of the division championships. Then division champions play for the Stanley Cup and the World's Championship.

There are other potent leagues--in the Northwest, in New England, on the Pacific Coast, even in Texas. There are endless amateur and semi-amateur entanglements flung on the ice of evenings when the great professionals are idle. Earnest collegians play hockey for glory and varsity insignia (hockey has become a major sport along with football, baseball, rowing, running at Yale, Harvard, Princeton, etc.).

Three men were seriously hurt on Manhattan teams the opening night. The Rangers won from Toronto, the New York Americans lost heavily to the Canadiens, Detroit overwhelmed Pittsburgh, Chicago and Boston tied desperately, Montreal beat the world's champions from Ottawa by 2 to 1.

* Played with steel studded wooden balls as big as baseballs. The player bowls his first ball (with an underhand, twisting throw) toward a tiny object ball. His opponent strives to bowl nearer the object ball, by shrewd control or oftener by knocking the enemy away.