I can’t say I have a comprehensive understanding of who the powers in New England Prep School Hockey were in 1971. As far as I know, nobody was publishing rankings and there was no end-of-season tournament. 

That led toa certain parochialism. You tended to know only the schools you played against and once you got out of that circuit, ignorance could prevail.  That was certainly the case for me.  Up till very recently, for example, I assumed that the Connecticut prep schools with great hockey programs now (Kent, South Kent, Salisbury, Gunnery, Taft, Choate, Canterbury, Hotchkiss, Avon Old Farms, etc) didn't play at the same level as the Exeters, Andovers, Deerfields, KUAs.  I assumed there was a sort of barrier at the Massachusetts-Connecticut line below which top-flight hockey didn't travel.

But John Roone has kindly set me straight, through this note he recently sent me:  "I played at Kent during the 70-71 season. Kent has had hockey since 1911; they were founders of the Founders League and the Housatonic Valley League, which we would win my Senior year 72-73. Our Rink was covered and then they enclosed one end the following season. We played College Freshman and JV Programs; in fact my first "high school game" was against the Yale JV's at Yale. We also played and whipped Mass High School teams like Arlington, so we were better than you give Prep Schools Credit for in your notes. I was a 'natural' sophomore, meaning I did not repeat a year and we had only 2 or 3 PG's who would come for 2 years, not just one. Our league was Taft, Hotchkiss, Choate, Trinity Pawling, Berkshire, and all had indoor rinks and top level talent. Many went on to play D1 College at a time when D1 teams were 70% Canadian. We had 6 seniors from my last year at Kent play D1 and 2 play D2."

I thank John for that note. 

And here are the schools that did make an impression on me, in my parochialism.

Exeter: The 1970-71 Exeter team was good, though the team the next year was great, a year when Exeter loaded up on kids from Montreal.  One of them, Craig Shannon, is now a Canadian investment banker I’ve done deals with.  There were also some really good American kids, like Can’t-Remember-His-First-Name Riley, the son of the West Point coach, and Sean Hanley, a very good Bowdoin player and later a teammate of mine in New York in the Cocktail League.

KUA:   Somehow I never played an away game at KUA, in any sport. But wherever it is in the New Hampshire wilds, for at least the last 40 years or so good hockey players have always found the place, and even more so than on the Berkshire hillsides of Mount Hermon, there must not be anything to do at KUA but skate, shoot and play old-time Eddie-Shore hockey.  Granted, the 1970-71 MH team beat KUA, but I remember KUA teams always playing with edge.

(I once nearly got run over by Eddie Shore, the summer of 1974 or so, when I was a garbage man in my hometown, which he also lived in.  He drove a big Cadillac and wore a fedora even in the summer.   He almost ran me over but he was the guy cursing, at me. No wonder the Springfield Indians were the first pro athletes ever to go on strike.)

Deerfield: Deerfield always got the really good ones. Like Kevin Carr, who went on to captain Harvard, and Corky Powers, who went on to star at Princeton.  Back then Mount Hermon beat Deerfield in hockey maybe once every 10 years or so (MH beat Deerfield in the late 70s when MH went undefeated).  And to make things worse, Deerfield’s uniforms always looked awesome.  Handsome uniforms were, according to John McPhee's book "Headmaster," a point of pride for the legendary head, Frank Boyden, who took over Deerfield Academy in 1902, right out of Amherst.   The 1970-71 team would've been one of the very last that Boyden saw play.  He had retired in 1968 and would die in 1972.

Tabor: Tabor's victory against Mount Hermon in December came early in what turned out to be an undefeated season for Tabor (and it might be the only undefeated boy's varsity hockey team in Tabor history, as there are no other banners in the current Tabor rink honoring such a feat).  Under Coach Lucien Lavoie, Tabor went 15-0-1 beside the waters of Buzzard’s Bay in 1970-71.

Lenox:  The 1970-71 Lenox team spanked Mount Hermon 10 to 3.  Chances are the team had a good number of good Native American players, as Lenox was famous for a progressive approach to Native American recruitment and scholarships. Lenox School also had probably the nicest new rink of any prep school in New England, nicer even then Exeter’s 2-sheet ice palace (that would later have subsidence issues).   The problem was, the rink bankrupted the school—that very year—and so the next year, with Lenox shuttered,  Northfield Mount Hermon took most all of Lenox’ Native American students, en masse, including Robbie and Ronnie Cree.  Ronnie Cree was the most talented lacrosse player I ever saw play in person and in the spring of 1972 he would help make NMH lax second only to Andover in New England.

Vermont Academy: VA wasn’t exactly a power, but on a clement winter Saturday afternoon, there wasn’t a better place to play hockey in America.  The VA rink was outdoors then, running north-south on a playing field, and the playing field was at the foot of the east-facing ski jump.    While you were on the bench, between shifts, ski jumpers flew into the sky, over and over.  For me that was pure winter beauty.

There’s a saying in Quebec: “Mon pays, ce n’est pas un pays; mon pays, c’est l’hiver.”

“My country, it’s not a country; my country, it’s winter.”

Vermont Academy, in the deep valley of Saxton’s River, is an academy of winter.  

Others: There were a lot of good hockey prep schools we didn’t play back then. Andover, Berkshire, Kent, Hotchkiss, Choate, St. Paul’s, Lawrenceville, etc.  But then again Mount Hermon played only 14 games against other prep schools in 1970-71.  Here in 2014 it’s early February and NMH, ranked# 9 in New England at the moment (not bad!), has already played 23 games, with 7 games to go, and maybe a post-season tournament.  Thirty games minimum; twice the number of the 1970-71 team.