Jack Parker’s Wiseguys, page 25
Meanwhile, two hundred feet down the other end of the rink, Craig was clearly enjoying himself, unflappable despite being on the receiving end of some creative taunts. “Those Wisconsin fans are great—I mean it,” said Craig with a sweaty grin in the postgame. “They have a reputation for upsetting goalies with their ‘Sieve’ chant, but I liked it. And I got a big kick out of it when our fans started calling ‘Sieve’ to their goalie. That really turned me on.”
Boston’s rabid print reporters swarmed the postgame locker room, collecting quotes to fill the Friday papers. One of the emerging story lines was how useful the unscheduled play-in quarterfinal had been to BU, how it kept them game ready for what otherwise would have been a two-week break before facing the defending champs.
Parker, described as both “exhausted” and “emotionally drained” by the writers, actually bummed a smoke from a member of the assembled media before starting his presser. “We played well, we beat them to the puck all night.” Parker was then asked about East versus West. “I’m provincial, I’d like to have an all-East final.” He was pressed about what it meant to him to finally beat a WCHA team in the national semifinals. “It’s my fifth straight year in the NCAAs,” said Parker, taking a long drag of a stranger’s cigarette. “It will be the first time I’ll be playing Saturday night instead of Saturday afternoon.”
The room emptied out as the writers scrambled up the Civic Center stands to press row to hammer out their deadline stories. As usual, Carl James and his assistants were the last men standing in the locker room, transferring wet underclothes into the industrial dryers before locking up.
Some of the BU players chose to eat a late dinner at the Marriott rather than explore downtown Providence. Freshmen Cotter and Johnson were sitting at a table across from veterans Bill O’Neill and John Melanson. These two upper classmen had both endured the painful loss to Michigan in last year’s NCAA semifinal. O’Neill and Melanson looked across the table towards the two frosh. “Do you guys have any idea how big this next game is?” asked O’Neill.
Johnson nodded, replying, “Yeah, yeah, it’s a big deal,” as he finished chewing.
O’Neill bore in on Johnson, deadly serious, and asked another question. “How many national champions do you know? In any sport, never mind hockey, how many national champions do you know?”
Johnson looked over at Cotter. “I don’t know if I know any, do you?”
Cotter shrugged and shook his head. They chewed a little slower, and all conversation ceased.
Now middle aged, Johnson’s recollection remains fresh. “It was really cool the way they presented it. That just put it in a whole new light, and I’ve never forgotten it. Once in a while I get out the ring for one reason or another and I think about it. How many people do you know that are national champions at anything? And how many opportunities are you going to get?”
By winning their semifinal on Thursday in the old NCAA tourney format, BU players found themselves with an unusual, carefree Friday. They had no defined opponent and no game to play. After their ECAC loss to Providence earlier that month, they were forced to scramble through three desperate elimination games to get into this championship match. Now they could finally exhale; they had fought their way into the catbird’s seat.
The BU players got in a short morning skate, schmoozed with the press, and walked leisurely through downtown Providence back to the Marriott for meals and naps. That night they would relax in the stands and watch two teams burn precious fuel for the right to play them in the title game on short rest. The refreshed Terriers had pockets bulging with house money.
But the stress on Parker continued to mount. At Friday’s breakfast, he learned the name of the beating victim from the Dugout brawl, and the news could not have been worse. The kid on the receiving end was the son of an executive vice president of BU. Parker spent some of his day off gathering details in preparation for the inevitable inquiry by school administration.
The first person Parker sought out was O’Callahan. Although he had not taken part in the fight, he was a few feet away during the incident. “What the hell happened?” demanded Parker late that morning.
“The kid was drunk and started a fight with Silky,” said O’Callahan, a fact that was later corroborated. “We stood by, but Silky was getting the worst of it. Then we jumped in.”
By “we,” O’Callahan meant Lamby and Boileau. Once Silk was rescued, he joined his two mates in the violent retribution. There were accounts of a daylong search for the victim’s missing tooth, which was eventually found wedged into the toe of a Frye boot. The news was sickening on several levels, but Parker managed to put it into yet another compartment. He never shied away from controversy, no matter how uncomfortable, and this one was massive. Parker would eventually deal with his players’ brutal act, but he needed time to sort out blame and deliver appropriate justice. News coming from Boston was not good—the victim was hospitalized. The young man’s father was furious and had gone to the press.
“I remember speaking to Joe Concannon of the Globe,” said sports information director Ed Carpenter. “He said he had gotten pictures of the kid from the hospital. But Concannon said he wasn’t going to run the story, said it would be bad for the sport.”
The late Joe Concannon, a BU alum who was a regular at the Dugout, was ensconced in conflicts of interest. He made a choice that spring that would be incomprehensible in today’s era of gotcha journalism. Had he run that story of the Dugout fight, it would have wreaked havoc on the sport, the tournament, and his alma mater. Publicizing the incident would have forced BU to sit out perpetrators Lamby, Silk, and Boileau for the championship game. The Terriers would have gone from solid favorites to controversial underdogs. A strong argument can be made that Joe Concannon saved BU’s season by spiking that sensational story.
“I think it weighed on the staff, obviously,” said Cahoon. “There’s turmoil in the department, you’re worried about image.” Cahoon is convinced that Parker’s greatness emerged in trying times like these. “Jack had to navigate. His brilliance came into play many times when you had issues like this. He could take all of that and he’d deal with it. He’d use it to shape the team’s focus, the way they go about their business, the motivation piece.”
Parker, in a never-ending cycle of crisis management, was clearly suffering physically and mentally. His diet was a revolving cycle of caffeine, nicotine, and postgame beers. He looked and felt awful, but he was a warrior. Hardened by the streets of Boston, he soldiered on.
On Friday, Parker shared an early dinner with Cahoon and Murray before heading over to the Civic Center to scout the second semifinal. Local rival BC was taking on Bowling Green, the kings of the fledgling Central Collegiate Hockey Association, the second Western hockey conference. Bowling Green was led by its own Lake Placid Miracle Men Ken Morrow and Mark Wells and was guided by Hall of Fame coach Ron Mason. In what was a first for the three BU coaches, they found themselves rooting for, not against, mortal enemy BC. Parker and company simply couldn’t wait to put an end to the recent dominance of Western schools in the national tournament—plus, BU knew they owned BC this season.
“I’m sick and tired of hearing about how good these Western schools are,” said Parker, beating the refrain like a drum. “The West dominated the national tournament for years. I am sick and tired of it.”
Sitting in the stands Friday night, Parker, Murray, and Cahoon hunkered down in the upper reaches of the Civic Center, scouting Bowling Green’s tendencies until the game was out of reach. The crosstown Eagles delivered magnificently, running up a 5–0 lead before coasting home with a 6–2 thrashing of yet another vanquished Western power. For the first time in months, Parker got to relax throughout the second half of the game. At the final buzzer, Parker was like a little kid, telling his assistants Cahoon and Murray, “That’s terrific! We’ll show these Western schools—it’s going to be an all-East final!”
Then he hustled down the Civic Center aisles to greet the victors exiting the ice. Parker sought out Cedorchuk, not only a coaching contemporary but a fellow city guy: Parker from Somerville, Cedorchuk from Charlestown. Together they had halted the Western schools’ dominance of the NCAA tournament. Parker would deal with Cedorchuk’s Wisconsin locker-room transgression at a later time. This was a moment to celebrate.
Parker caught up with Cedorchuk and clapped him repeatedly on the back. “Way to go, Cedor, way to go! No more Western school bullshit!” Parker felt genuine fraternity towards Cedor, a guy he grew up competing against as both a player and coach. At a time of intense angst in his life, Parker now had a brother-in-arms in Cedor, and despite the fact that they would be desperate to defeat one another in less than twenty-four hours Parker was happy to share the joy of defeating the West on this night. They had slain this hockey dragon in tandem, a score Parker had been yearning to settle since he started college coaching. Four straight years of losing to WCHA schools in the NCAA tournament had been gnawing at Parker like a cancer, and having a peer to share in its removal was exhilarating. Parker pumped Cedorchuk’s hand, and the two Boston men flashed their victory smiles. Then Cedor was swept away in BC’s triumphant conga line, pulling him into their joyous locker room. Parker, too, remained elated the rest of the night.
In spite of all the madness that surrounded him in the closing chapters of this bizarre season, Parker, with the help of fellow hockey men from Boston, had finally exorcized his professional demons, the Western hockey establishment. The wolves at Parker’s door—motherless children, a massive controversy from the Dugout, a nearly perfect season that teetered on the brink—had all been dealt with to the best of his ability. He had one final chore before his submarine could resurface from the inky depths of a hockey season like no other. That task was to beat the rival he knew best of all: Boston College.
22
BEST OF ENEMIES
THE 1978 NCAA CHAMPIONSHIP GAME
•
The 1978 NCAA Finals featured two Boston schools that had dominated Eastern hockey for three-quarters of a century. They competed every few weeks for bragging rights in the Hub of hockey. If it wasn’t the ECACs, it was the Beanpot; if it wasn’t the ’Pot, it was a sold-out regular season game. Though their schools shared the same street, barely three miles apart, they kept a safe distance. “They had the Dugout and we had Mary Ann’s,” said BC’s star defenseman Joe Augustine, referring to their respective watering holes.
Olympic icon and loyal Terrier Mike Eruzione claimed that Parker never gave pep talks before a BC game, because he didn’t have to. When he’d see players on campus on game day, he’d just come up to them and quietly say, “BC tonight, boys.” That was the only pep talk he ever had to give for BC.
“When I was a player,” said Parker, who captained BU in 1967–68, “our coach Jack Kelley used to always talk about the fact that you can’t be the best team in the nation if you can’t be the best team in the East. You can’t win the conference championships or the national championships until you’re at least the best team in Boston.”
Seemingly every year, college hockey’s answer to Athens and Sparta waged war on ice for Beanpot and conference glory. BC–BU games were some of the toughest tickets in town at the old Boston Garden, always reaching that magical sellout capacity of 13,909. Playing annually in an NHL arena was a tremendous motivator for these players, but Parker was convinced that venue was irrelevant. “If it was Boston Skating Club at three in the morning and it was BC–BU, they’d be just as ready to play,” said Parker.
By winning their respective NCAA semifinals in 1978, these ancient rivals had reached a new plateau: they would be meeting in the national championship game for the first time in history. Providence, one of New England’s premier hockey towns, was an easy commute for every fan, student, or parent from either school. As fate would have it, parties from both institutions stayed at the same hotel: the Providence Marriott, one hundred yards off Interstate 95, exactly one mile from the Civic Center. It is only a medium-sized hotel, so every Marriott room that weekend was designated for participating teams and their families. Most of the parents from the two teams shared the same passion and enmity as their kids.
BC was at a distinct disadvantage heading into the Finals because unlike BU, they had no recovery day. So after a brief postgame snack following Friday’s romp over Bowling Green, the Eagles were tucked into bed before midnight. Some of the BU parents noticed the room numbers of the BC kids, just down the hall from where the Terrier hockey dads were getting rowdy, pounding beers.
“Our hotel was a disaster,” said BC’s Augustine. “There were parties on floors and guys were trying to sleep. One guy, a father of one of the BU players, kept knocking on our door. Out of seniority, I had my freshman roommate George Amidon get up to answer the door. After about five times I went out and had words out in the hallway. It was pretty sophomoric.”
Hype for this Boston-versus-Boston hockey showdown was rampant. New England’s appetite for the rivalry demanded coverage, and Boston’s veteran newspapermen delivered. The rarely quoted but extremely valuable BU defenseman Bill O’Neill opened up to his North Shore local, the Daily Peabody Times.
“BC thinks they’re number one,” said O’Neill. “Who did they beat? A fourth, fifth, and seventh place team [in the ECACs]. This makes me sick. We beat BC by a total of fifteen goals; that speaks for itself. They took our [ECAC] title and we owe them something. The only thing we’ve won this year has been the Beanpot, and we just won’t settle for that.”
O’Neill and others were chafing over the publicity BC had received for finally winning the ECACs. The Globe and the Herald devoted large amounts of space to BC’s NCAA send-off party at Chestnut Hill. Names of the Eagles’ players were painted on the McHugh Forum ice, and the BC band played before practice. The Terriers had grown accustomed to being media darlings in Boston and resented BC players not only stealing the limelight but also receiving ceremonial watches that BU presumed to be their birthright.
O’Callahan ranted: “We beat ’em 6–3 at home in early January, we beat ’em 12–5 at McHugh, and then ten days later in the Beanpot, we beat ’em 10–5. In three games, we scored twenty-eight goals against them. And now we got to play ’em in the freaking NCAA Championship?” Currently a middle-aged financier in Chicago, O’Callahan still bristles with his signature intensity.
Decades after his playing days, O’Callahan woke up Parker after watching a random BU–BC broadcast off his satellite. “What the hell is wrong with your team?” demanded O’Callahan.
“Who is this, Jacky? What are you talking about?” said the groggy Parker.
“About your team!” shouted O’Callahan. “I’m watching your captain hanging out by the BC bench having a friendly conversation during the delay. What is wrong with you guys?”
Parker keeps a running list of the most competitive players he’s ever coached, and O’Callahan is always #1 or #1A (1998 Hobey Baker Award winner Chris Drury’s name usually finds its way into that conversation). Parker uses colorful scenarios to illustrate their intensity, like the hypothetical 3:00 a.m. game at the Skating Club or a street hockey game in a parking lot. After a while you realize that Parker is comparing his most intense players to himself. He takes immense pride in his record as player against Beanpot schools (27–1). When he calls O’Callahan and Drury his “most competitive players,” he is merely acknowledging that they were as competitive as he was, which to him is the ultimate compliment.
If there was any one BC player that Parker would admit coveting, it was Joey Mullen, a roller-hockey product from Hell’s Kitchen in New York City. Mullen had successfully made the transition from a game on asphalt, which required four-wheel quads and electrician tape pucks, to traditional ice hockey. The Manhattanite maintained his lofty scoring numbers after he got onto ice skates. Mullen was a first team all-American in 1978. His statistical line reveals an impeccable season: thirty-four games played; thirty-four goals, thirty-four assists. Unlike before the Wisconsin game, Parker had both the time and the prior knowledge to school his charges for BC, and that preparation started and ended with Mullen.
“Parker and the coaching staff had such a great scouting report on all the BC players, especially Joey Mullen,” said defenseman LeBlond. “We knew that he was a right shot, and he very rarely carried the puck to the outside, on his right side. I remember being told what his major move was—he was always pulling it to the inside. So we were just waiting for that.”
Parker also instructed his high-scoring wing John Bethel to put his offensive desire on hold and to focus on shutting down Mullen. And when it came time for a last-minute motivational speech, he turned once again to Cahoon.
The assistant coach entered the room in coat and tie, and all eyes turned to the diminutive blond man. Cahoon had been a huge factor in BU’s back-to-back national championships six years prior. “This game has got to be played like any big game,” said Cahoon, moments before the 1978 Terriers took the ice for the biggest contest of their lives. “This game has to have all the elements that have made this team up to now: the speed, the playmaking, the physicality; sticking together as a group of people. There has to be a levelheadedness, too, so you don’t give things back that you don’t need to.
“This game is big game,” continued Cahoon, a product of Boston’s North Shore, who then inserted a gag line. “I don’t know if it’s as big as the Marblehead-Swampscott football game on Thanksgiving, but it’s big.” A few players laughed aloud; Parker stifled a smile and shook his head. Cahoon paused to let the ripples calm and then picked up the speech.
“Make no mistake about it,” he paused, raising his right index finger to show the room his 1971 Championship ring, gold with a red ruby in its center. “No one can ever take this away from me.” He had everyone’s unflinching attention. “And I’d like you guys to have that same experience.”
O’Callahan will never forget that speech. His whole college career in Boston had been about claiming various Beanpot trophies and ECAC watches; now he finally had a shot at that elusive championship ring. “He stuck his ring right in our faces,” said O’Callahan. “It was like taking the Beanpot and throwing all the watches and rings in it. If we win, we get them all; if we lose, we lose them all. This was the real final.”
Boston’s rabid print reporters swarmed the postgame locker room, collecting quotes to fill the Friday papers. One of the emerging story lines was how useful the unscheduled play-in quarterfinal had been to BU, how it kept them game ready for what otherwise would have been a two-week break before facing the defending champs.
Parker, described as both “exhausted” and “emotionally drained” by the writers, actually bummed a smoke from a member of the assembled media before starting his presser. “We played well, we beat them to the puck all night.” Parker was then asked about East versus West. “I’m provincial, I’d like to have an all-East final.” He was pressed about what it meant to him to finally beat a WCHA team in the national semifinals. “It’s my fifth straight year in the NCAAs,” said Parker, taking a long drag of a stranger’s cigarette. “It will be the first time I’ll be playing Saturday night instead of Saturday afternoon.”
The room emptied out as the writers scrambled up the Civic Center stands to press row to hammer out their deadline stories. As usual, Carl James and his assistants were the last men standing in the locker room, transferring wet underclothes into the industrial dryers before locking up.
Some of the BU players chose to eat a late dinner at the Marriott rather than explore downtown Providence. Freshmen Cotter and Johnson were sitting at a table across from veterans Bill O’Neill and John Melanson. These two upper classmen had both endured the painful loss to Michigan in last year’s NCAA semifinal. O’Neill and Melanson looked across the table towards the two frosh. “Do you guys have any idea how big this next game is?” asked O’Neill.
Johnson nodded, replying, “Yeah, yeah, it’s a big deal,” as he finished chewing.
O’Neill bore in on Johnson, deadly serious, and asked another question. “How many national champions do you know? In any sport, never mind hockey, how many national champions do you know?”
Johnson looked over at Cotter. “I don’t know if I know any, do you?”
Cotter shrugged and shook his head. They chewed a little slower, and all conversation ceased.
Now middle aged, Johnson’s recollection remains fresh. “It was really cool the way they presented it. That just put it in a whole new light, and I’ve never forgotten it. Once in a while I get out the ring for one reason or another and I think about it. How many people do you know that are national champions at anything? And how many opportunities are you going to get?”
By winning their semifinal on Thursday in the old NCAA tourney format, BU players found themselves with an unusual, carefree Friday. They had no defined opponent and no game to play. After their ECAC loss to Providence earlier that month, they were forced to scramble through three desperate elimination games to get into this championship match. Now they could finally exhale; they had fought their way into the catbird’s seat.
The BU players got in a short morning skate, schmoozed with the press, and walked leisurely through downtown Providence back to the Marriott for meals and naps. That night they would relax in the stands and watch two teams burn precious fuel for the right to play them in the title game on short rest. The refreshed Terriers had pockets bulging with house money.
But the stress on Parker continued to mount. At Friday’s breakfast, he learned the name of the beating victim from the Dugout brawl, and the news could not have been worse. The kid on the receiving end was the son of an executive vice president of BU. Parker spent some of his day off gathering details in preparation for the inevitable inquiry by school administration.
The first person Parker sought out was O’Callahan. Although he had not taken part in the fight, he was a few feet away during the incident. “What the hell happened?” demanded Parker late that morning.
“The kid was drunk and started a fight with Silky,” said O’Callahan, a fact that was later corroborated. “We stood by, but Silky was getting the worst of it. Then we jumped in.”
By “we,” O’Callahan meant Lamby and Boileau. Once Silk was rescued, he joined his two mates in the violent retribution. There were accounts of a daylong search for the victim’s missing tooth, which was eventually found wedged into the toe of a Frye boot. The news was sickening on several levels, but Parker managed to put it into yet another compartment. He never shied away from controversy, no matter how uncomfortable, and this one was massive. Parker would eventually deal with his players’ brutal act, but he needed time to sort out blame and deliver appropriate justice. News coming from Boston was not good—the victim was hospitalized. The young man’s father was furious and had gone to the press.
“I remember speaking to Joe Concannon of the Globe,” said sports information director Ed Carpenter. “He said he had gotten pictures of the kid from the hospital. But Concannon said he wasn’t going to run the story, said it would be bad for the sport.”
The late Joe Concannon, a BU alum who was a regular at the Dugout, was ensconced in conflicts of interest. He made a choice that spring that would be incomprehensible in today’s era of gotcha journalism. Had he run that story of the Dugout fight, it would have wreaked havoc on the sport, the tournament, and his alma mater. Publicizing the incident would have forced BU to sit out perpetrators Lamby, Silk, and Boileau for the championship game. The Terriers would have gone from solid favorites to controversial underdogs. A strong argument can be made that Joe Concannon saved BU’s season by spiking that sensational story.
“I think it weighed on the staff, obviously,” said Cahoon. “There’s turmoil in the department, you’re worried about image.” Cahoon is convinced that Parker’s greatness emerged in trying times like these. “Jack had to navigate. His brilliance came into play many times when you had issues like this. He could take all of that and he’d deal with it. He’d use it to shape the team’s focus, the way they go about their business, the motivation piece.”
Parker, in a never-ending cycle of crisis management, was clearly suffering physically and mentally. His diet was a revolving cycle of caffeine, nicotine, and postgame beers. He looked and felt awful, but he was a warrior. Hardened by the streets of Boston, he soldiered on.
On Friday, Parker shared an early dinner with Cahoon and Murray before heading over to the Civic Center to scout the second semifinal. Local rival BC was taking on Bowling Green, the kings of the fledgling Central Collegiate Hockey Association, the second Western hockey conference. Bowling Green was led by its own Lake Placid Miracle Men Ken Morrow and Mark Wells and was guided by Hall of Fame coach Ron Mason. In what was a first for the three BU coaches, they found themselves rooting for, not against, mortal enemy BC. Parker and company simply couldn’t wait to put an end to the recent dominance of Western schools in the national tournament—plus, BU knew they owned BC this season.
“I’m sick and tired of hearing about how good these Western schools are,” said Parker, beating the refrain like a drum. “The West dominated the national tournament for years. I am sick and tired of it.”
Sitting in the stands Friday night, Parker, Murray, and Cahoon hunkered down in the upper reaches of the Civic Center, scouting Bowling Green’s tendencies until the game was out of reach. The crosstown Eagles delivered magnificently, running up a 5–0 lead before coasting home with a 6–2 thrashing of yet another vanquished Western power. For the first time in months, Parker got to relax throughout the second half of the game. At the final buzzer, Parker was like a little kid, telling his assistants Cahoon and Murray, “That’s terrific! We’ll show these Western schools—it’s going to be an all-East final!”
Then he hustled down the Civic Center aisles to greet the victors exiting the ice. Parker sought out Cedorchuk, not only a coaching contemporary but a fellow city guy: Parker from Somerville, Cedorchuk from Charlestown. Together they had halted the Western schools’ dominance of the NCAA tournament. Parker would deal with Cedorchuk’s Wisconsin locker-room transgression at a later time. This was a moment to celebrate.
Parker caught up with Cedorchuk and clapped him repeatedly on the back. “Way to go, Cedor, way to go! No more Western school bullshit!” Parker felt genuine fraternity towards Cedor, a guy he grew up competing against as both a player and coach. At a time of intense angst in his life, Parker now had a brother-in-arms in Cedor, and despite the fact that they would be desperate to defeat one another in less than twenty-four hours Parker was happy to share the joy of defeating the West on this night. They had slain this hockey dragon in tandem, a score Parker had been yearning to settle since he started college coaching. Four straight years of losing to WCHA schools in the NCAA tournament had been gnawing at Parker like a cancer, and having a peer to share in its removal was exhilarating. Parker pumped Cedorchuk’s hand, and the two Boston men flashed their victory smiles. Then Cedor was swept away in BC’s triumphant conga line, pulling him into their joyous locker room. Parker, too, remained elated the rest of the night.
In spite of all the madness that surrounded him in the closing chapters of this bizarre season, Parker, with the help of fellow hockey men from Boston, had finally exorcized his professional demons, the Western hockey establishment. The wolves at Parker’s door—motherless children, a massive controversy from the Dugout, a nearly perfect season that teetered on the brink—had all been dealt with to the best of his ability. He had one final chore before his submarine could resurface from the inky depths of a hockey season like no other. That task was to beat the rival he knew best of all: Boston College.
22
BEST OF ENEMIES
THE 1978 NCAA CHAMPIONSHIP GAME
•
The 1978 NCAA Finals featured two Boston schools that had dominated Eastern hockey for three-quarters of a century. They competed every few weeks for bragging rights in the Hub of hockey. If it wasn’t the ECACs, it was the Beanpot; if it wasn’t the ’Pot, it was a sold-out regular season game. Though their schools shared the same street, barely three miles apart, they kept a safe distance. “They had the Dugout and we had Mary Ann’s,” said BC’s star defenseman Joe Augustine, referring to their respective watering holes.
Olympic icon and loyal Terrier Mike Eruzione claimed that Parker never gave pep talks before a BC game, because he didn’t have to. When he’d see players on campus on game day, he’d just come up to them and quietly say, “BC tonight, boys.” That was the only pep talk he ever had to give for BC.
“When I was a player,” said Parker, who captained BU in 1967–68, “our coach Jack Kelley used to always talk about the fact that you can’t be the best team in the nation if you can’t be the best team in the East. You can’t win the conference championships or the national championships until you’re at least the best team in Boston.”
Seemingly every year, college hockey’s answer to Athens and Sparta waged war on ice for Beanpot and conference glory. BC–BU games were some of the toughest tickets in town at the old Boston Garden, always reaching that magical sellout capacity of 13,909. Playing annually in an NHL arena was a tremendous motivator for these players, but Parker was convinced that venue was irrelevant. “If it was Boston Skating Club at three in the morning and it was BC–BU, they’d be just as ready to play,” said Parker.
By winning their respective NCAA semifinals in 1978, these ancient rivals had reached a new plateau: they would be meeting in the national championship game for the first time in history. Providence, one of New England’s premier hockey towns, was an easy commute for every fan, student, or parent from either school. As fate would have it, parties from both institutions stayed at the same hotel: the Providence Marriott, one hundred yards off Interstate 95, exactly one mile from the Civic Center. It is only a medium-sized hotel, so every Marriott room that weekend was designated for participating teams and their families. Most of the parents from the two teams shared the same passion and enmity as their kids.
BC was at a distinct disadvantage heading into the Finals because unlike BU, they had no recovery day. So after a brief postgame snack following Friday’s romp over Bowling Green, the Eagles were tucked into bed before midnight. Some of the BU parents noticed the room numbers of the BC kids, just down the hall from where the Terrier hockey dads were getting rowdy, pounding beers.
“Our hotel was a disaster,” said BC’s Augustine. “There were parties on floors and guys were trying to sleep. One guy, a father of one of the BU players, kept knocking on our door. Out of seniority, I had my freshman roommate George Amidon get up to answer the door. After about five times I went out and had words out in the hallway. It was pretty sophomoric.”
Hype for this Boston-versus-Boston hockey showdown was rampant. New England’s appetite for the rivalry demanded coverage, and Boston’s veteran newspapermen delivered. The rarely quoted but extremely valuable BU defenseman Bill O’Neill opened up to his North Shore local, the Daily Peabody Times.
“BC thinks they’re number one,” said O’Neill. “Who did they beat? A fourth, fifth, and seventh place team [in the ECACs]. This makes me sick. We beat BC by a total of fifteen goals; that speaks for itself. They took our [ECAC] title and we owe them something. The only thing we’ve won this year has been the Beanpot, and we just won’t settle for that.”
O’Neill and others were chafing over the publicity BC had received for finally winning the ECACs. The Globe and the Herald devoted large amounts of space to BC’s NCAA send-off party at Chestnut Hill. Names of the Eagles’ players were painted on the McHugh Forum ice, and the BC band played before practice. The Terriers had grown accustomed to being media darlings in Boston and resented BC players not only stealing the limelight but also receiving ceremonial watches that BU presumed to be their birthright.
O’Callahan ranted: “We beat ’em 6–3 at home in early January, we beat ’em 12–5 at McHugh, and then ten days later in the Beanpot, we beat ’em 10–5. In three games, we scored twenty-eight goals against them. And now we got to play ’em in the freaking NCAA Championship?” Currently a middle-aged financier in Chicago, O’Callahan still bristles with his signature intensity.
Decades after his playing days, O’Callahan woke up Parker after watching a random BU–BC broadcast off his satellite. “What the hell is wrong with your team?” demanded O’Callahan.
“Who is this, Jacky? What are you talking about?” said the groggy Parker.
“About your team!” shouted O’Callahan. “I’m watching your captain hanging out by the BC bench having a friendly conversation during the delay. What is wrong with you guys?”
Parker keeps a running list of the most competitive players he’s ever coached, and O’Callahan is always #1 or #1A (1998 Hobey Baker Award winner Chris Drury’s name usually finds its way into that conversation). Parker uses colorful scenarios to illustrate their intensity, like the hypothetical 3:00 a.m. game at the Skating Club or a street hockey game in a parking lot. After a while you realize that Parker is comparing his most intense players to himself. He takes immense pride in his record as player against Beanpot schools (27–1). When he calls O’Callahan and Drury his “most competitive players,” he is merely acknowledging that they were as competitive as he was, which to him is the ultimate compliment.
If there was any one BC player that Parker would admit coveting, it was Joey Mullen, a roller-hockey product from Hell’s Kitchen in New York City. Mullen had successfully made the transition from a game on asphalt, which required four-wheel quads and electrician tape pucks, to traditional ice hockey. The Manhattanite maintained his lofty scoring numbers after he got onto ice skates. Mullen was a first team all-American in 1978. His statistical line reveals an impeccable season: thirty-four games played; thirty-four goals, thirty-four assists. Unlike before the Wisconsin game, Parker had both the time and the prior knowledge to school his charges for BC, and that preparation started and ended with Mullen.
“Parker and the coaching staff had such a great scouting report on all the BC players, especially Joey Mullen,” said defenseman LeBlond. “We knew that he was a right shot, and he very rarely carried the puck to the outside, on his right side. I remember being told what his major move was—he was always pulling it to the inside. So we were just waiting for that.”
Parker also instructed his high-scoring wing John Bethel to put his offensive desire on hold and to focus on shutting down Mullen. And when it came time for a last-minute motivational speech, he turned once again to Cahoon.
The assistant coach entered the room in coat and tie, and all eyes turned to the diminutive blond man. Cahoon had been a huge factor in BU’s back-to-back national championships six years prior. “This game has got to be played like any big game,” said Cahoon, moments before the 1978 Terriers took the ice for the biggest contest of their lives. “This game has to have all the elements that have made this team up to now: the speed, the playmaking, the physicality; sticking together as a group of people. There has to be a levelheadedness, too, so you don’t give things back that you don’t need to.
“This game is big game,” continued Cahoon, a product of Boston’s North Shore, who then inserted a gag line. “I don’t know if it’s as big as the Marblehead-Swampscott football game on Thanksgiving, but it’s big.” A few players laughed aloud; Parker stifled a smile and shook his head. Cahoon paused to let the ripples calm and then picked up the speech.
“Make no mistake about it,” he paused, raising his right index finger to show the room his 1971 Championship ring, gold with a red ruby in its center. “No one can ever take this away from me.” He had everyone’s unflinching attention. “And I’d like you guys to have that same experience.”
O’Callahan will never forget that speech. His whole college career in Boston had been about claiming various Beanpot trophies and ECAC watches; now he finally had a shot at that elusive championship ring. “He stuck his ring right in our faces,” said O’Callahan. “It was like taking the Beanpot and throwing all the watches and rings in it. If we win, we get them all; if we lose, we lose them all. This was the real final.”
