Bill Fenwick wrote in response to my message about a 1968 game between
RPI and Colgate that was terminated after each team had too few players
to continue:
 
> The game may have been called, rather than forfeited.  I've heard of a
> few games being treated this way when some event (usually a
> bench-clearing brawl) causes the officials to decide that it would be
> best not to continue play.  In those cases, the team that was leading
> at the time (I've never seen this happen with the score tied) was
> declared the winner, and the score on the board was taken as the
> "official" result.
 
Bill is apparently correct.  I happened to check Don Birkmayer's
"Intercollegiate Hockey Newsletter" where the game in question was
mentioned in order to see if anything additional was written.  The game
is listed there as "called," rather than "forfeited".  I had always
thought that the word "called" was used for instances like when
baseball games were terminated because of rain.  Sorry for my confusion
-- to think that for 26 years (today is the 26th anniverary of this
game played on January 13, 1968) I had thought that RPI had forfeited
this game.
 
Don, who was (is?) the public address announcer for RPI, and thus
should have known what was going on, wrote that about 15 major and game
misconducts were called, not exactly 15 as I mentioned.  This makes me
think that the refs just said that the game was over without even
deciding who was to get all of the penalties.  They probably just
wanted to go home.
 
I guess that this leaves the original question of forfeits open.
 
Ralph Baer