There are certain philosophic and physical deficiencies to he charged against the Canadian game of ice hockey which, while not immediately apparent to the average observer who is satisfied as long as the players chase one another up and down the ice and occasionally beat one another over the head with their shinny sticks, have nevertheless been troubling sportsmen of intelligence and discrimination ever since two worthy citizens, William V. Dwyer, the eminent weinhandler of 48th Street, New York, and Colonel John Hammond, wealthy, retired West Pointer, acquired two Canadian hockey teams, dubbed them respectively the Americans and the Rangers and brought New York into the American section of the Canadian-American Hockey League.

Four American cities have hockey franchises, Detroit, Chicago, Boston and New York. Great crowds attend the games in every city, and so cannily are the cracker jack players distributed throughout the league that a bad match is a rare occurrence. The magnificent movement of the game and the sharp body to body clashes that punctuate the wheeling, rhythmic sallies of the skaters, have attracted a fine class of people, including the junior social set, which admires not alone the game and the handsome, stalwart Canadians who play it, but also the convenient late start and early finish of the matches which enables them to linger over dinner.

In Canada, hockey is the perfect game, but in America several charges are brought against it, all of them worthy of examination from the standpoint of national characteristics indicated by our own games. And of course, the chief absurdity from any viewpoint is the method of arriving at a champion, the natural climax of any and all sports.

The only American game comparable in structure and organization to hockey is baseball, in which there are two leagues, the American and the National. The teams of each league play among themselves a round robin series of 142 games. At the end of the season figured on a percentage basis of games won and lost, there is an American League and a National League champion. These two teams meet in a seven game series for the world championship. Since the English, the Germans, the Abyssinians, the Swedes, the Portuguese and the Greeks, since as a matter of fact no other nation plays this game, the title of world champion thus acquired is reasonably correct.

The Canadian-American Hockey League is split into two divisions, the International and the American Sections. In the former division are listed: the burly, beefy Montreal Maroons, the small, wiry, speedy, high-strung and temperamental Canadiens from the same city, the clever Toronto Maple Leafs, and the New York Americans owned by the afore-listed Mr. Dwyer. The American section embraces the rough, rowdy, Boston Bruins, the New York Rangers, the Chicago Blackhawks owned by the husband of the former Irene Castle, Major F. McLaughlin, and the Detroit Falcons. Each team plays forty-eight games in round robin with the other league members. At the conclusion of the season there is a leader in each division. One would naturally expect then to see the two division leaders tossed onto the ice of their respective home rinks for a five or seven game series with the winner to be crowned champion, blessed by the Bishop of Montreal and the Governor General of Canada, and stowed away in the morgues of newspaper offices until it is time to dig them out for another hockey season. But nothing of the sort happens. The two bottom teams are lopped off and the remaining six teams are involved in a complicated playoff known as Series A, B, C, D, and E over sixteen games, at the conclusion of which the team that finished in third place in its division may emerge as the hockey champion.

If you have the patience you may find it instructive to follow me through the tortuous and devious playoff system, a valuable lesson in dragging something out until the last dollar bill has been lured through the ticket windows. With the two last place teams eliminated we have in the International Division, teams 1, 2 and 3 and in the American Division teams A, B, and C. Now the fun begins. Teams I and A meet in a five game series. Teams 3 and C play a two game series as do teams 2 and B. The winners of these two matches play one another a two game match and the eventual winner of all this hocus pocus plays the winner of the teams i and A a final series of five games for the championship and any money that the hockey patron happens to have left.

The Canadian loves it because it means more hockey, just as the 100% American likes to have baseball going on all summer long even if he doesn't go to the games, but the hockey patrons south of the White Horse and Dewar Line are beginning to wonder whether they are not being flimflammed out of championships to which the teams they have supported all season seem to have won every right.

Under this system, a team that has been out on the ice hustling all season, and thereby giving the patrons a good show all the time, having won the division championship may find itself cheated out of its valuable title by a sextette that has just played sufficient hockey to remain in the running. The champions are tired and worn from the exercise necessary to top the League, the third place team is reasonably fresh and in an excellent position to overcome one that is on the verge of going stale. By rights, and under the American system of League play, second or third place teams belong with the spectators of a world series.

Some of hockey's most thrilling and heart-quickening moments occur when one or more players on a side are cooling their Irish or French Canadian tempers in the penalty box as punishment for the public venting of personal spleen on the ice, or for infractions of rules. Then it is four men against two and the strong side redoubles its efforts to score, sending four and sometimes five men down the ice to overwhelm the weakened team. Here many a gallant stand is made by the penalized defenders, but here again, the true sportsman finds himself vaguely troubled, and analyzing this sensation of discontent, he finds that he is not fond of any sport spectacle where the sides are unevenly matched, where it is two against one or a big fellow against a little one.

It is a curious truth that in the living of life many a man is willing to achieve victory with superior numbers or by taking advantage of an opponent when he finds him temporarily embarrassed, but in his play he demands a return to the old standards of chivalry—to the times when it was considered noble and au, fait, having disarmed your opponent to throw your own weapon away and finish him with your teeth. The gangster code with its polite and efficacious method of expunging business competitors by shooting them in the back when they are unarmed and unsuspecting has exposed these ancient graces as a sucker racket except in sport and play, and it is amusing to note at a prizefight at Madison Square Garden that section of the audience known as Gunman's Row, protesting violently and noisily when one boxer appears for a moment to be seizing an unfair advantage over another, such as heeling, or thumbing, or ripping a bad eye with the laces, or hitting low,—all good gangster pranks.

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Thus, too, however willing a gentleman might be to out-strong a business adversary he finds himself not quite satisfied when he sees five men armed with sticks charging down upon three. The women, having no sense of honor whatsoever, love it and rise to urge the heavier squad on to annihilate the depleted defenders, but the male sees something in this spectacle that troubles his conscience.

The personal beauty and physical strength of the hockey players, their complete disregard for bodily safety and their reckless courage is another unspoken and unadmitted count against the game, but merely from the standpoint of the male escort.

It is very difficult either to look or act in an imposing or impressive manner before the girl friend after having exposed her for an evening to the rugged charms of Lionel Conacher, Bill Cook, King Clancy, Hec Kilrea or Stewart, or the appealing phizzes of Bunny Cook who looks like a truculent baby, Paul Thompson and Murray Murdock who are better looking than any male screen stars, or the seductive persons of the entire squad of Les Canadiens, the dark haired French Canadian team, charmers all from George Mantha to Aurel Joliat, and from Joliat to Leduc. Here is youth on the wing, and gentlemen have discovered that the little girl is apt to be very absent-minded the rest of the evening after witnessing an hour or so of heroes dashing up and down the ice. However, I can offer no panacea for this problem. It isn't mine, it's yours.

In addition to which, the penalty box, as now constituted, is something of a menace to spectators whose seats are located in the vicinity. In a recent match in Madison Square Garden, one Horner of the Toronto Maple Leafs stretched one Patterson of the New York Americans supine with a brisk wallop from his shinny stick after Patterson had roughed him. Both were banished to an inclosure a little larger than a telephone booth, located in the very midst of spectators, where naturally enough they began a fist fight that quickly grew to the proportions of a riot. The privat polizei maintained by the arena were unable to cope with it and emissaries ran out into the night bawling for bluecoats. Excited hockey players became embrawled, not only with one another, but with excited spectators. One hero went clawing and scrabbling through three tiers of promenade seats and a box to get at a customer who had insulted him. As his feet were shod with razor sharp blades, lie might very well have performed several impromptu appendectomies on the chair holders on the way up. After ten minutes of riot, semi-panic and hysteria, order was restored but eventually there will be a serious casualty, an event that might easily be forestalled by establishing two penalty boxes instead of one and placing them at opposite ends of the arena, one for each team. If the management exhibits continued reluctance to do this, I shall suspect them of harboring a secret satisfaction when riots occur, in the belief that such exhibitions of acrimony will stimulate trade.

Finally, in spite of the rousing action, speed and motion of the grand Canadian game, there is too little scoring to satisfy the American who craves the excitement not alone of action but of action that bears fruit. The game as it stands is almost too difficult.

The goals are small. They are nearly filled with the persons of goal-tenders in overstuffed clothing and equipped with oversized sticks. The path thereto is further barred by two burly defence men who stand in front of the opening and knock down any individual trying to skate through with the puck, and still further complicated by the presence of two wings and a center who skate down and become defence men during attacks launched by the enemy.

Tie games are too frequent as well as games where one side determines to protect a one goal lead and goes on the defensive. A good defensive team can sit on the puck all night and not be scored upon unless it is unlucky. The technical difficulties of the game are so great that scores are pretty miraculous whenever they occur. And further, there is a monotony to what little scoring there is. It can occur in just one way. The puck must cross the line at the mouth of the net. Nearly every other sport has more than one way in which points can be scored. Football has four, baseball more, tennis several. True, the scoring of a goal varies in the manner of accomplishment. It may be the effort of one man singlehanded, the result of a three man passing attack, or the climax of a wild pile-up in front of the goal mouth with an alert and lucky player pouncing on a loose puck and whipping it in. But the results are all the same. There is no premium on individual effort, no bonuses for brilliance and frequently, against a good defensive team, no scoring at all. Face-offs near the net as penalties for offside rarely if ever result in quick scores, and not even two minutes of handicap play due to men in the penalty box always result in a tally.

These may be trifles about which to quibble, but the game is so good, so thrilling and entertaining that it ought to be made perfect, a matter which could be attended to quickly and easily merely by following the advice of Professor McFee as outlined in the above. I trust that all of these minor deficiencies will have been attended to by next year.