(See front cover)
The difference between professional hockey and professional baseball is a lot bigger than the difference between the two games. In the U. S., big-league baseball is 62 years old, big-league hockey 13. Whereas baseball has two big leagues of eight teams each, hockey has one big league divided into two divisions—International and American—of four teams each. Whereas baseball's annual championship is a World Series in which the leading team of each league takes part, hockey's championship is not a series between the leading teams but a complicated round robin (for a battered $50 cup) in which the three top teams of each division take part.
Since no team is out of the race for the Stanley Cup until it can no longer climb out of cellar place in its division, last week, with only five games to go, the hockey season was at its height. In the International Division—led by the Toronto Maple Leafs, with the Montreal Canadiens and New York Americans struggling for second place—the Montreal Maroons seemed destined to stay in the cellar. But in the American Division— with the Boston Bruins and New York Rangers well out in front—the Detroit Red Wings, in the cellar, were close on the heels of the Chicago Black Hawks. Thus seven of the eight teams still had a good chance to win, place or show, and the Rangers, famed for their spirited stretch finishes, were only four points behind the Bruins and battling for first place.
Red Light Parade. To the uninitiated, hockey, the fastest game in the world, looks like a haphazard melee in which someone by luck occasionally pokes a puck into a net. But professional hockey players, who are required to make snap decisions while speeding 30 ft. a second, have well-timed plays ready for almost every circumstance that arises, seldom make goals save by effective teamwork. Baseball had its famed Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance combination, but every big-league hockey team has a forward line (left wing, centre and right wing) that functions with the precision of baseball's great trio.
Every time a goal is made, a red light winks. Last week the fast-passing Rangers were leading the red-light parade with 135 goals, seven more than their nearest rival, the Toronto Maple Leafs. To the confusion of casual readers of sports pages the individual scoring heroes were two gentlemen named Dillon and Drillon. Cecil Dillon, Ranger forward, was leading the American Division last week with 20 goals and 17 assists for a total of 37 points for the season. He stood, however, well behind the leader of the International Division, 187-lb. Gordon Drillon of the Maple Leafs who had tallied 22 goals and 24 assists for a total of 46 points.
Saving Grace. While the goal-scoring forward line goes zooming towards fame and the two burly defensemen crash violently against their opponents to the cheers of the galleries, the goaltender, encased in 25 lb. of pads, is grimly occupied with the job of making saves. If one of his teammates makes a slip, it is too bad, but if a goalie makes a slip, it is a score against him and his team. Target of whizzing pucks, he must be nimble as a squirrel, sharp-eyed as a hawk. And since a perfect performance for him is a shutout, he works for naught on the scoreboard.