Jack Parker’s Wiseguys, page 19
Sports Illustrated’s Gammons called Yale’s 7–5 win, “College hockey’s upset of the decade.” It was a low-water mark of the season for BU’s senior goalie Durocher.
“I wasn’t pleased with the way I played,” said Durocher, facing the media hordes that had invaded BU’s locker room, eager to report this blockbuster story. The co-captain did not shirk his responsibility. “We were pretty close to an undefeated season. I guess you’ve got to look back and be thankful a lot of the games went our way. We’ve got to put it in the back of our minds; we can be beaten. Even with the record we have, we still haven’t won anything.” The writers then hustled over to Parker, leaving Durocher to collect his thoughts and his sweaty gear.
“We weren’t emotionally geared, and they were sky-high,” said Parker. “There was no pressure being undefeated. If we were 16–5 coming in here, we’d have still lost that game.” Then he was asked about his senior goaltender, and Parker was blunt. “Durocher hasn’t played well in the last three games.” And he was correct. After Durocher’s rousing start, the clutch wins over the class of the East—Cornell, Clarkson, and BC—Durocher was fading, at least statistically, down the stretch. In the three games that Parker referred to, Durocher had compiled an .801 save percentage and a 4.67 goals against average, both subpar for a national contender.
Parker had a busy postgame, making several trips within the bowels of the Whale while the Yale fans continued to howl in victory up above. First stop was Yale’s locker room to pay his respects to the Elis, who were now within striking distance of the final ECAC playoff spot. “Get the seventh spot, we don’t want to see you in the eighth spot,” said Parker. Because BU had already clinched first place, the Terriers were guaranteed to play the eighth seed in the ECAC quarters in two weeks. As Concannon said in the Sunday Globe, BU “already had its fill of Yale.”
Parker returned to his locker room under the Whale’s south stands, a room that was starting to empty out, when he saw his freshman star Fidler in full uniform, face red with emotion.
“What the hell?” said Parker.
Fidler choked out some words. “I can’t even freaking talk. We lost!”
“We’re going to lose again,” said Parker. “Relax, it’s part of playing hockey.”
“I don’t like to lose,” said Fidler.
“Mark, get dressed. The whole bus is packing.”
Fidler recalled the emotional pain. “I couldn’t even talk, that’s how used to winning we were. You never thought we were going to lose.”
Fidler was not alone. Parker exited the locker room to find daughter Allison in a puddle of tears.
“Allison, what’s the matter?” asked Parker.
“What’s the matter?” said Allison. “We lost!”
“Allison, you don’t go crazy when you win; you shouldn’t cry when you lose.”
“Oh, I’m not crying just because we lost,” said Allison. “I’m crying because we lost to such a lousy team!”
Her response touched Parker’s funny bone, and he had to share the mirth.
“Allison, come with me.” And he took his daughter’s hand and walked her down to Taylor’s office.
“Timmy, come out here. I just want to tell you some perspective my daughter has on this,” he said with a smile. For years until Taylor’s death, the two men shared laughs over that scene.
Intense ten-year-old emotions leave permanent memory scars. “When we lost, I totally remember crying,” said Allison. “I couldn’t contain myself. I was completely convinced we weren’t going to lose a game that year. I can’t believe my dad walked me down to Mr. Taylor, but that’s how close they were.”
Levity also flowed years later from the players on both sides, as this game has never stopped resonating. Chicago resident O’Callahan was in New York for a post-9/11 fundraiser, chock full of Big Apple financial heavyweights. He found himself in a room surrounded by a swarm of Yale hockey men, three of whom had played in that fateful game.
“They found out I was in the room,” said O’Callahan with a laugh. “These three guys, good-naturedly of course, harassed me the whole night about that game. It was like the greatest thing that ever happened to Yale hockey was knocking off the undefeated BU team in 1978. Here we are twenty years later, and they wouldn’t leave me alone about it. They were telling everybody, ‘Yeah, we kicked your ass!’”
“I was with Jimmy MacDonald and my brothers, Steve and Bobby,” said Dave Harrington, who along with MacDonald combined for four points on that unforgettable night. “Bobby has a photographic memory and was able to take Jack through the game shift-by-shift. It was laugh-out-loud funny.”
Exactly two years after being harpooned at the Whale that Saturday afternoon, O’Callahan went on to capture Olympic gold. He was later portrayed in the popular movie Miracle, about those magical two weeks in Lake Placid. He knows a thing or two about hockey upsets.
“That,” he said with a dramatic pause, “was Yale’s ‘Miracle on Ice’ moment.”
18
BEANPOT BRAWLERS
•
The Terriers’ dream of running the table, joining Cornell’s 1970 squad as the only undefeated national champions, had been derailed by Yale. Having already clinched the ECAC’s top spot, BU had literally nothing to play for in their final regular season games. The rugged Northeastern Huskies, led by brutish Chris “Knuckles” Nilan, were eager to knock off their in-town rivals. The two Boston teams with dogs on the front of their chest staged a violent midweek skirmish in the world’s oldest hockey venue, ancient Boston Arena.
BU began the affair going through the motions and soon found themselves tasting their own blood. Tony Meagher literally got his face handed to him: seven stitches outside his upper lip, six inside, both surrounding a chipped tooth. No penalty was called. Parker was predictably vehement. “Meagher gets punched in the mouth and no one sees it!” Very few people saw it, including Parker. It was a stick, not a fist, that split Meagher’s lip. Parker’s reaction resulted in the first of his two minor penalties as he exited the ice for the first intermission. BU had been outshot 13–5, and only Craig’s brilliant goaltending kept the Huskies at bay, 1–1 after one.
“We were a little apprehensive after the Yale game,” said Lamby, stating the obvious. Northeastern’s roughshod greeting was a rude awakening for the Terriers, who typically never shied away from the rough stuff. “We were never afraid to play anybody,” said Fidler. “The guys we had, Lamby, O’Callahan, Bethel, they’d be right there for you.”
Such was the case this night. Bethel took a close look at his linemate’s bloody puss as team doctor Tom Silva stitched it up in the locker room and vowed to get even. “Don’t worry,” said Bethel, “I’ll deal with the payback.” What Bethel may not have known was that the perpetrator of the act was six-foot-one, 210-pound Jim Walsh, who doubled as a starting linebacker on Northeastern’s football team. But Bethel was determined to settle the score, one way or another.
BU awoke from their post-Yale funk in the second, engaging Northeastern at every turn. This was when Boston Arena had its signature egg-shaped corners, leaving no place to hide on that narrow sheet. Every 50/50 puck became a street brawl with willing participants on both sides, delighting the rabid fans sitting directly over the mayhem in the arena’s low-hanging balconies. Kevin Hunt of BU’s Daily Free Press described the action as “bruising, brawling . . . terrorism.” The off-ice officials finished this night with writer’s cramp from jotting down the twenty-six combined penalties.
Bethel hunted down cruiserweight Dave Archambault in place of Walsh, challenged him, and settled the Meagher mugging with his fists. Both pugilists were ejected with fighting majors and game misconducts. With the bloody cheap shot rectified, the Terriers went about finding a way to win the game. BU put itself in its usual spot toward the end of regulation—tied up with less than five minutes remaining.
There are individuals who thrive during chaos, stealing the show when the walls are collapsing around them. Hetnik and Silk are two of those guys. Silk arrived on the Huskies’ goalmouth just in time to stash in a Fidler power play rebound, and Hetnik buried the finale into an empty net for the 6–4 win. Fidler had a salient theory as to how the Terriers were so dominant in seemingly every third period. “We destroyed you with our forechecking,” said Fidler. “We’d wear you down, taking the puck, make you draw penalties. By the third period, you had nothing left.”
That formula had propelled BU’s record to a nation’s best 22–1, but their first period versus Northeastern was nearly disastrous. “They were all over us,” said goaltender Craig. “I was just hoping to keep us in the game. We played better when we weren’t in the box.” But therein lay the rub. BU had five penalties in the opening stanza to just one for Northeastern. It was the perfect recipe for one of Parker’s vintage outbursts directed at the men in stripes.
“I think they were incompetent,” said Parker, whose target that night was Tom Walsh, the brother of Parker’s former captain Eddie Walsh of Arlington. The personal connection didn’t defuse the situation, as Walsh rang up the coach with four minutes in penalties. “I feel I can’t make comments to refs like other coaches,” complained Parker. It was a case of prior acts influencing the justice, since Parker had already battled with every ref in Division I. But his team needed a shot in the arm, and despite the fact that it was a meaningless game, the reactive coach from Somerville wasn’t going down without a fight.
•
The infamous winter of 1978 was still in full force on the last Friday in February, as the BU team bus pushed west of Albany towards a frosty date with Colgate’s Red Raiders. Despite growing up in Ontario, Tony Meagher remembers that trip for its brutal cold. With his lips tripled in size and his thirteen stitches resembling a caterpillar, Meagher stared out the window at the bleak landscape. “The waterfalls froze that day,” said Meagher, whose mashed-up face ultimately cost him his high-scoring wingman against Colgate. Bethel was home in Boston, suspended for his retribution fight against Northeastern.
Playing another meaningless game minus one of your top scorers—in a frozen barn in the middle of central New York—motivated no one; but the Terriers showed up. Like so many schools that year, Colgate came out mainlining adrenaline for their chance to hang a loss on the top-ranked Terriers in front of their home fans. “Everybody brought the best they had, whenever we played,” said freshman Todd Johnson. “It happened all the time.”
Quebecer Bob Boileau was the beneficiary of Bethel’s absence and joined new wingman Meagher to flank Mark Fidler. The newly formed trio made cool jazz all night long, improvising for a combined seven points.
Defense was an afterthought this night, however, as Colgate grabbed the lead late in the game. Another losing team was on the verge of its own shocking upset. Once again, BU found a way to ruin the party. After Parker pulled Durocher, third-line center Paul Miller jumped on as the extra attacker. Just eleven seconds from defeat, Fidler found his roommate in the slot, and Miller delivered his biggest goal of the year, tying the game at five.
Crestfallen, Colgate could not manage another shot, as BU dominated four minutes of overtime. With a minute left in the extra session, Fidler spied the opportunistic Boileau, who converted for the sudden-death thriller. Late-game drama had become commonplace for this hardened squad.
“We had a certain character within our team,” said Todd Johnson. “We always found ways to come out on top. It had to be heartbreaking for a lot of teams, because a win could have made a big difference for their season. Yet somehow, some way, BU always won.”
Once again goaltender Durocher was less than stellar, his goals against average continuing to climb. Yes, the Terriers were winning, but their margin was now razor thin, against marginal opposition. How would they respond to the mettle of college hockey when the season’s legacy was on the line? It was a question that churned in Parker’s gut.
They loaded up the bus and pulled out into the crystalized night for the long ride back to Boston. Parker huddled with his two daughters, Jacqueline and Allison. No one had notified the team yet, but the fourth member of that nuclear family, Phyllis, was terribly sick. The blood tests had confirmed their worst fears: lymphoma, without much hope for recovery. The two girls maintained a sense of normalcy by dutifully going to these games, giving their dad a quiet sense of support. To the outside world, Parker maintained a perpetual game face. But in the company of his daughters he felt entirely safe and lowered his guard. Together, they circled the wagons.
“It was us against the world,” said Allison. “My sister and I have always been very protective of our dad. We were the three amigos.”
Whatever uncertainties coursed through Parker’s veins this night, as mounting pressure threatened to implode his hockey submarine, he had comfort for the next four hours, flanked by loving blood.
•
The 1978 Beanpot was the only one in history that extended all the way into March. Even Boston’s ferocious storms of 2015 pushed it only until February 23. 1978’s Beanpot finale was held on the first day of March, on a Wednesday no less, twenty-three days after the Beanpot opener during that infamous blizzard. It sure didn’t feel like Beanpot weather to the BU players getting off the Green Line trolley at North Station. The tourney is traditionally a glimmer of light in the long dark winter, but on this evening the sun was still out, burning from an unfamiliar angle. The players shuffled down the grated steps to street level, crossed Causeway Street, and headed up the ramp towards their locker room. When they arrived, a familiar voice was blasting a message loud and clear.
“I’m gonna need a spoon! I’ve got to eat them beans!” It was Carl James in full “Sarge” mode, imploring his charges. It was time to strap on their Beanpot game faces. March hockey was trophy season, where victories translated to hardware.
Due to the influx of local freshmen, BU’s hockey team was now comprised primarily of Massachusetts players, and for them playing at Boston Garden was a massive hockey fantasy. “You always wanted to play in the Garden,” said frosh Daryl MacLeod, “where you watched Bobby Orr play, Derek Sanderson, and the Big, Bad Bruins. It was a great feeling stepping onto that ice.”
Winning a Beanpot on Garden ice was vital to both the freshmen and veterans as well. Contrary to twenty-first-century wisdom, BU did not own the Beanpot in the mid-1970s. The fact was that entering the 1978 Championship, only co-captain Durocher had actually placed his hands on that legendary ’Pot of silver. “We felt we should have won three or four,” said Durocher, “and we were fighting to win it a second time in our four years.”
The team standing between BU and its first trophy of the year was Harvard, the reigning Beanpot champs. The Crimson was suffering through a rare losing season, having lost five of six since winning their Beanpot semifinal three weeks earlier. They were weary from being pushed by Dartmouth the night before and teetered on the brink of ECAC playoff elimination. Yet they still had many of the same players who defeated BU for the ’Pot a year earlier, led by the indomitable Hughes brothers of Somerville—sniper George and macho defenseman Jack.
Adding to the intrigue was a personal issue between George and Dick Lamby over the company they kept and who was dating whom. All the factors created a combustible formula that boiled over late in the game, a brawl that generated colorful headlines and photos for the papers. The old-school donnybrook created a cache of Beanpot stories to be shared endlessly over hot stoves throughout New England winters.
What should not be forgotten, however, was the puck-possession clinic BU put on to open the game. Twentieth-century statistics don’t do justice to the sheer domination of the Terriers in the first period. O’Callahan and junior forward Mickey Mullen were the only goal scorers, but the texture of the ice surface was the best indicator of BU’s thorough control—the Boston Garden Zambonis needn’t have resurfaced BU’s defensive end of the ice; all the first-period action was in the other end.
The Globe’s Peter Gammons reported that the Terriers “humiliated Harvard,” and counted six shots on Harvard’s goal in the game’s first two minutes. Concannon called it “Clinical,” the Herald describing BU as having “leapt on the defending champs at the drop of the puck, and never stopped.” The final score was 7–1 in a game that was even more lopsided. Harvard coach Bill Cleary summed it up best. “I knew from the opening face-off we were in trouble from the way they came right at us and took control of the game.”
Todd Johnson remembers that a year later, Parker used game footage from that Beanpot final for a team video pump-up session. “I remember my sophomore year, Parker didn’t think things were going that well,” said Johnson, “so he brought out some film of that Harvard game.” Johnson chuckles at the memory. “I’m not sure they [Harvard] came out of their end for ten or eleven minutes in the first period without icing the puck. It was just an onslaught.”
A new line emerged in this game: Mullen, Miller, and MacLeod. Gammons labeled the trio the “3-M line,” and it combined for seven points in the 7–1 win, including a hat trick from Mullen. O’Callahan’s opening goal, two additional helpers, and his ferocious defense earned him MVP honors. His partner Lamby contributed a pair of goals in a tour de force for the nation’s best defense tandem. Lamby and O’Callahan would not be remembered for their offense, however, but for their part in the infamous late-game brawl.
With Harvard trailing 6–1 late in the third period, Crimson forward Murray Dea got into what the Globe called a “jousting match” with Lamby. O’Callahan stepped between them, and then Dea took a run at Silk during a tie-up along the boards. Players started squaring off, and since BU was killing a penalty, they were shorthanded. George Hughes and Lamby peeled off to the blue line to settle their personal differences mano a mano, while O’Callahan was stuck under three players. “Two guys jumped me,” said O’Callahan in the postgame. “Jack Hughes pulled me down.” Silk jumped in, but the Terriers were still outnumbered, and O’Callahan was in trouble.
