Jack Parker’s Wiseguys, page 13
“I’ll murder you,” was the best Laughlin could come up with, but he never got even. “It was timing,” said Fidler.
BU ran off to a 3–0 lead, all via the power play. They stifled Clarkson’s various comeback attempts all night with both clutch goaltending and timely scoring to prevail 7–4. Not only did Fidler avoid Laughlin, but he notched his second consecutive hat trick. When Lamby iced the game with an open net goal, he too had three goals, becoming the first defenseman to turn the trick in the history of BU.
Morganti’s game story in the Globe called BU’s power play that night “mechanically perfect.” Lost in the aftermath of this game was the courageous goaltending of co-captain Durocher. He turned away forty Clarkson shots in the win, reverting back to the Goalie-of-the-Year form of his freshman season.
The Terriers had made a massive statement from the North Country sweep, vaulting to a 13–0 record and turning the ECAC standings into a race for second place. BU’s power play was clicking at a mind-numbing 30 percent. Their man-up routine began with a high-speed game of catch between Lamby and O’Callahan at the blue line, the latter faking a slapper and teeing up Fidler for the kill shot from the top of the circles. The five-foot-eight freshman had become the deadliest triggerman in the East. The BU machine was humming along with two stellar goalies, a superb quartet of defensemen, and now the hottest line in hockey—the Trio Grande. And most important to their success, they were a selfless team.
In his retelling of the Clarkson game, Fidler barely mentioned that he collected his second hat trick in as many nights, an astounding individual feat. He deflected praise and shared the puck love. “No one can juke people and get three goals in college—you’re getting goals because the kids on your line are moving, too,” said Fidler. “If you’re open, you’re getting the puck; if they’re open, they’re getting the puck. That night I had three against Clarkson, someone else had three, Lamby. Jacky [O’Callahan] had like ten points that weekend; it was a really unselfish team.”
Parker, a perpetual worrier, finally had a night to relax. With Allison at his side in the front of the bus, the boys babbling in the rear, he allowed himself a chance to savor life atop the hockey world. There had been troubling news from home stemming from his wife Phyllis’ recent blood tests, but he stashed it into the first available compartment. He would call from the hotel.
The windshield wipers were beating double time; the weekend’s relentless snowfall was accelerating yet again. The experienced driver safely navigated the ten miles back to the hotel down Route 11. Parker sized up the intense North Country weather and called an audible this night, ditching one of his hard and fast road trip customs.
“Jack usually had one rule when it came to partying,” said Ruvolo, who quoted the coach: “Just don’t drink in the hotel bar, because that’s where I’ll be.” Parker liked to unwind with a beer or two with his assistants after games and preferred not to fraternize with his players. But on this night he didn’t want his guys wandering the streets of Canton, barhopping in a blizzard. He wanted them safe for the flight home. So he relaxed the rule that night and allowed his troops to get loose in the Best Western’s bar, just off the lobby. He would remain low profile in the shadowy corners with Cahoon. Even the strict Parker knew his troops earned a night to kick back and celebrate. He and his two captains had just added to BU’s legacy with consecutive North Country sweeps, in both 1976 and now ’78. The time was right for Parker to loosen his grip.
There are ten bar stools at the Best Western’s hotel pub in Canton, with tables to accommodate another forty people comfortably. The BU hockey party took over the joint this Saturday night, as most locals rode out the storm at home. Ed Carpenter was still bemoaning the winter whiteout while getting a bite to eat. The Meagher clan filled a table in the corner. Although Tony did not have the star quality of his older brothers Terry and Rick, he had just come off a five-point weekend and solidified his place on the team’s top scoring line. The youngest of BU’s greatest hockey siblings was enjoying his turn, basking in the loving light from Doreen and Al.
A few feet away, Jim Craig had cornered Worsley and was engrossed in the finer points of goaltending. It was a memorable scene: the aging Hall of Famer sharing his wisdom with a future Olympic legend. “I always want to get better,” said Craig, “and anytime I can sit with someone who knows more than I do, who wants to help me, I’m always asking questions. To hang around with him and be able to sit there in the bad weather . . .” Craig trailed off, smiling at the memory.
The most energy in the room, however, belonged to Hetnik and Melanson. Like a drum major, Hetnik once again high-stepped into the bar impersonating the Dirty Dozen, blaring out his signature “National Emblem March,” trailed by a small entourage. Melanson peeled off and began clearing a table near the center of the bar, carefully placing a chair directly in front of it. He got the crowd’s attention when he climbed atop the table, and the players roared in delight as Melanson imitated Pittsburgh Pirates towering pitching ace John Candelaria.
“Oh the big left-hander!” shouted Melanson, as he swung his arm down from above his head in a classic fastball delivery, stepping down onto the chair during the follow through. This was prior to the Randy Johnson era, and Melanson, a baseball lover from his playing days at Wakefield High, was enamored with the concept of a pitching giant coming down from the sky with an overhand fastball. Pennant Fever had gripped New England throughout late 1970s, as Boston’s Old Towne Team had intensified its rivalry with the Yankees.
A few players took a nervous glance at Parker, checking for his reaction. He pretended to ignore the commotion as Melanson climbed atop the table for his next delivery. A passionate baseball fan himself, Parker was not going to bust up such a visceral reenactment of the towering “Candy Man.” When the bar erupted after the next virtual fastball, the coach stifled a grin.
Pitchers of beer flowed amidst shouts and laughter, music cranked from the jukebox. Although a storm raged outside, all were safe inside the Best Western. The Terriers were just a short flight from a relaxing Sunday with family and friends back in Boston. They enjoyed trying on their new status—North Country conquerors.
The flight home from Massena, however, was not to be.
Seven hours after Saturday night’s revelry, Parker was barking questions into the lobby phone, his face reddening. Air New England was on the line with bad news. An hour ago Parker awoke to clear skies, relieved that it had finally stopped snowing. But the newly arrived high-pressure front had brought buffeting winds. The combination of high-velocity winds and Massena’s short runway generated too much risk for the Air New England officials.
“Parker thought the pilot was chickenshit,” recalled Passaretti. The coach now had to scramble for a bus to Burlington, Vermont, and then book a new flight back to Boston. Traveling through Burlington triggered sour memories of 1976. His mood darkened. Everyone was suffering from the cocktail flu, and tempers were short. The player most ticked off was Lamby. Passaretti swears he heard this from the senior defenseman: “If I ever find that pilot, I’m going to take a run at the guy.”
Parker finagled a bus, stretching an already swollen budget for the unscheduled ride to the Burlington airport. Their three-and-a-half-hour bus trip included crossing over the ice floes of northern Lake Champlain before slogging south to the airport. Saturday night’s good cheer had evaporated after last call. Despite the foul moods, Parker still managed to unload a zinger that has stood the test of time.
“Gump Worsley needed surgery last night. He had to get Jimmy Craig’s nose removed from his ear.” The line generated the one laugh on their dour ride to the airport. Everyone’s Sunday plans had been dashed, and when the Terriers finally touched down at Logan it was well past the dinner hour. They were grumpy, dehydrated, and they all had classes the next day. Their busy week had begun, and their most despised rivals awaited them at the end of it.
12
THE BATTLE OF COMMONWEALTH AVENUE
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On February 6, 1918, Boston University and Boston College suited up hockey teams with unrockered blades that looked like goalie skates and right-angle sticks for their inaugural meeting at Boston Arena. BC took that original contest 3–1, and the two schools have been battling ever since. In the minds of Hub hockey fans, there has never been one without the other. They have taken turns dominating the hockey landscape in Boston, in the region, and nationally, always with one paying close attention to the other. One cannot take public transportation from downtown Boston to BC without passing through the BU campus on Commonwealth Avenue. They are three miles apart. There are no secrets. They now recruit the same Boston talent, they compare scores, they read about each other in the daily papers. They know they must escape each other’s shadow if they are to succeed.
Prior to the 1977–78 season, the biggest dividing line in the BC–BU rivalry was in the nationality of the players recruited. While the patriotic Eagles of BC prided themselves on their roster being exclusively American, BU recruited heavily north of the border. Their powerhouse teams in the early and mid-1970s were led by Ron Anderson, Vic Stanfield, and the Meagher brothers, all from Canada. The last of the Meaghers, Tony, says that BC’s anti-Canadian recruiting practice fueled his competitive juices, making BC–BU more than an in-town rivalry; it was an international one as well.
As a famed Jesuit University, BC had a natural appeal to Boston’s large Irish-Catholic population. But one of the most colorful wiseguys in the annals of Boston hockey lore—and his loyal mom’s unforgiving will—forever changed the hearts and minds of a critical patch of land in the BC–BU recruiting wars.
Charlestown of the 1970s, the so-called armed robbery capital of America, has generated countless anecdotes of heists and sinister plots being hatched from every corner of that square mile surrounding Bunker Hill. Now a gentrified community brimming with young professionals eager to snatch up housing in a town adjacent to downtown Boston, it is a community still known for being Irish Catholic, fiercely loyal, and heavily intertwined.
With Boston Garden less than a mile from the Charlestown Bridge, The Town became hockey fanatics when Bobby Orr led the Bruins to their first modern-era Stanley Cup on Mother’s Day in 1970. Street hockey became a way of life in every available nook and cranny of Charlestown. Its love affair with the sport has spawned notable college stars and NHL regulars, wildly disproportionate to the size of its population.
Of all the great hockey families in Charlestown, one name towers over the rest: Fidler. Proud matriarch Jane raised three sons to Division I stardom in Boston: Joe, Mike, and Mark, all three matriculating to the pros. Joe was the oldest, the one mainstream media knew the least, but according to Charlestown insiders he was at least as talented as his more heralded younger siblings. He was also the wildest. Charlestown hockey lifers like big Jim Vesey call him “crazy” as a term of endearment. The wildest of the wild-child era, Joe Fidler epitomized the term “wiseguy.” His legend carries on today, far beyond his impressive scoring totals at BC and Northeastern.
He entered BC as an eighteen-year-old ball of energy in 1971, a five-foot-nine, 170-pound dynamo with a knack for the net. He rang up twenty-nine goals in his first two seasons, and averaged over a point per game. But his hockey exploits were too often overshadowed by his off-ice passions and hilarious shenanigans. He had no shortage of that mischievous leprechaun in his Irish DNA. Joe Fidler’s carousing stretched the patience of the Jesuit Fathers of Chestnut Hill, until one episode pushed them past the breaking point.
There is no official record of the outrageous act that ended Joe Fidler’s career at BC, but the oral history of it remains on the tips of tongues of all the great storytellers familiar with it. After a particularly joyous night of postgame carousing, Joe decided to go for a joy ride. Down Commonwealth Avenue. On a Zamboni. Now, there are some who believe this occurred while he was playing for Northeastern and others who swear this was the episode that got him ousted from BC, but all the tellers of this tale speak it with a smile. This is not the kind story told in the Minnesota heartlands or the snow belt of Michigan. The Joe-on-the-Zamboni story belongs to Charlestown, told over a friendly pint, with a twinkle in the eye. The basic facts are bedrock: Joe drove a Zamboni on a public street, and he was ousted from BC. The legend is so large that it often obscures Joe’s prodigious talent. What is often forgotten from this zany yarn, however, is the story’s postscript: how the fallout from Joe’s mischief, and the response from his mother Jane, forever altered the recruiting pipeline between Charlestown and Boston College.
That dominant Fidler hockey gene ran through Joe’s two siblings. Mike and Mark could both score, compete, and fight if necessary, from sunup to sundown. But the inescapable draw of good Irish Catholics to Boston College, the Irish Boston dream, had been severed forever in the Fidler household due to BC’s treatment of Jane Fidler’s number-one son.
Middle brother Mike enrolled at BU in 1974, starred for two years, and was the first American in memory to get signed to the NHL before completing college. He opened the eyes to the Charlestown hockey community that it was more than just Canadian skaters who fueled the Terrier success. Mike was one year ahead of Charlestown neighbor Jack O’Callahan, and he persuaded the fierce student-athlete to come to BU instead of the other Beanpot schools.
“Typically, Charlestown kids all went to BC prior to me and Mike Fidler,” said O’Callahan. “Because we’re basically all Irish Catholics, so BC, BC, BC. But something happened with a Charlestown kid at BC getting in trouble, Mark Fidler’s older brother Joey, and after that the Charlestown kids all started going to BU.”
After O’Callahan opted for BU, Terrier recruiters now had a foothold in Charlestown. Scoring sensation Mark Fidler, the third of the remarkable Fidler brothers, enrolled at BU after winning two state championships for Matignon High. Conventional wisdom has it that Mark going to BU was a forgone conclusion, but the truth is, had matriarch Jane Fidler not intervened, young Mark would have taken the Green Line trolley three miles past Babcock Street and played hockey at the Heights instead.
“I always wanted to go to BC growing up,” said Fidler a generation later, shattering a myth. “My mother said, ‘You’re not going to BC.’ I didn’t want to mess with my mother.”
“You can go anywhere you want,” said Jane Fidler, “but you’re not going there.”
“You sure?” asked Mark, in his final appeal.
“Yeah I’m sure,” said Jane.
Joe’s infamous Zamboni ride resulted in two other Fidlers and O’Callahan coming to BU, and leveled the playing field between the two rivals when it came to recruiting Boston’s best talent. Since the arrival of Mike Fidler, BU went on to dominate the Beanpot tournament, winning at double the rate of Boston College since Mike first played and won in 1975. In terms of historic impact, Joe Fidler’s epic ride now rivals that of Paul Revere’s in the town around Bunker Hill.
In addition to Mark Fidler, there were other stars on BU’s 1977–78 team that were originally enamored with Boston College. Two of BU’s most important players both yearned to play for BC while growing up in Boston; both had their dreams dashed.
“When I was younger, I was an altar boy,” said goaltender Jim Craig, “and the priest brought me to Boston College. I talked to coach Ceglarski and he basically said I was a nice boy but should stick close to home. He didn’t recruit me, obviously. Then I went up to St. Anselm’s and tried to get in there as well. Steve Cedorchuk was the coach there, and he basically said the same thing as Ceglarski.
“I was really motivated against BC,” said Craig. “I loved the chance at the end of the game to shake both those coaches’ hands and say, ‘Thank God I wasn’t good enough to go to your school.’”
David Silk’s story echoes Craig’s. “I had looked at Boston College, and coach Ceglarski wasn’t interested,” said Silk. “They had a lot of right-handed shots, and they said, ‘Look, you’re not our type.’ I had a chip on my shoulder against BC. It was totally Us against Them in every way. We didn’t go past the bend in Comm. Ave; we stayed around our neighborhood.”
After Mark Fidler’s initial infatuation with BC, he too embraced the sports “hatred” that makes rivalries bubble. “We hated everything about them. My oldest brother, he got thrown out of BC. I didn’t like them.”
Parker admits that during his tenure, BU and BC often solicited the same players, but he’s convinced that there is an inherent difference in who ends up where. “We’re miles apart in culture and type of kids we coach,” said Parker. “It’s amazing that we both recruit the same kid, and the kid that goes to BC should have gone to BC, and the kid that winds up at BU should have gone to BU.”
But like the Sorting Hat in the Harry Potter saga, sometimes a Gryffindor should have been a Slytherin, and vice versa. Such was the case with BU sophomore defenseman Billy LeBlond. He wore Top-Siders, while the clogs of Silk and O’Callahan were offensive to him. Fidler and Cotter played street hockey in Charlestown, LeBlond played golf and tennis at the most exclusive country club in New Canaan, Connecticut. “I was sort of this outsider,” said LeBlond. “This preppy guy showing up with all these city-slickers. They had fun with me.”
LeBlond’s classmate from Westminster Prep, Pierce O’Neill, attended BC and summered with LeBlond on the coast of Maine. After their freshman year, O’Neill introduced LeBlond to a BC coed nicknamed Doro. They courted throughout college and eventually married, with Doro bearing two children. “Doro” was Dorothy Bush, the daughter of the forty-first president, George H. W. Bush. When George was campaigning for the 1980 Republican Party nomination, he was introduced at a BU home hockey game. “I remember getting a lot of elbows from the guys on the bench,” said LeBlond. Somehow this member of America’s aristocratic elite was sharing a locker room with Boston’s salty proletariats. His country club peers must have been amused at the company he kept at BU.
