Sport: Hockey: Mid-Season

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In the International Division last week, the Toronto Maple Leafs were overwhelming favorites to keep their present No. 1 position. Fast, heavy, durable and daring, the Maple Leafs' two most spectacular assets are Forwards Harvey Jackson and Charles Conacher, who lead the League in scoring goals. In second place were the Montreal Maroons, a clever team whose crack defenseman is Charles Conacher's older brother, Lionel. Fighting for third place last week were the Montreal Canadiens, who last summer traded their best players for younger ones who have thus far failed to justify themselves, and the New York Americans, an erratic assortment of seasoned players too old to be ambitious and youngsters too ambitious to be steadily effective. Fifth and last were the St. Louis Eagles, new in name this year but actually the old Ottawa Senators.

In the American Division, with no team as weak as the Eagles, the Detroit Red Wings were last week slipping into last place, while the New York Rangers, by means of their extraordinary winning streak, were climbing into third. A notch above the Rangers were the boisterous Boston Bruins, built around sandy-haired Eddie Shore. Leading the division was the team which won the Stanley Cup last year and which most experts favor to retain it this year, the Chicago Black Hawks.

When the Black Hawks wron the Stanley Cup a year ago, a lion's share of the credit went to their spry, handsome, chattering little goaltender, Charles ("Chuck") Gardiner, considered one of the ablest in the history of the game. Two months after the final game last year, Gardiner died of a brain tumor. Whether the Black Hawks win again will depend on many things but most of all upon the man who took his place.

The opposite of his predecessor in temperament, appearance and technique, Lorne Chabot is a bulky, silent, languid French Canadian. Reared in Montreal, he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Field Artillery at 16, fought at Passchendaele and Vimy Ridge. After the War he joined the Royal Northwest Mounted Police. His professional hockey career started in 1926 when he signed up with the New York Rangers. The next season it nearly ended when, in the playoffs for the Stanley Cup, a flying puck cut his eye. The Rangers' manager, Lester Patrick, playing goal for the first time in his life, finished the game in Chabot's place, helped his team win, 2-to-1.

Goalies who have been seriously injured once are usually too wary of the puck to be of much use thereafter. Chabot proved an exception. Traded to Toronto, he helped that team win the Stanley Cup in 1932, the following year guarded its net throughout the longest hockey game on record (2 hr., 44 min.) which the Maple Leafs won, 1-to-0. Last year he played for the Montreal Canadiens. Before this season started he and three hockey-player friends went on a fishing trip. In a village saloon, one of them picked up a paper which contained the news that Chabot had been traded to the Black Hawks.