Legendary Hockey Institution JACK PARKER
Halfway through the third period of last Saturday's Big Red Hockey Classic at Madison Square Garden the video screen played an ancient clip from Lake Placid of Mike Eruzione's GWG vs the USSR. The ensuing image was a live shot of a rounder, balder and seemingly content Mike Eruzione, located about 10 rows behind the B.U. bench. A standing ovation followed, appropriate for all the baby-boomers who recalled that MSG was a critical footnote in the Miracle on Ice, the venue where Herb Brooks' charges got smoked 10-3 by the Soviets big red machine 10 days prior to the Winter Games.
The man known as "Ruz" has never strayed too far from the family of B.U. hockey, attending all the Beanpots, several NCAA games and even helped out as an associate coach for Jack Parker's club. Ruz had been captain of Parker's 1977 team who had gone to the Frozen Four in Detroit in 1977. A semifinal loss to host Michigan kept them from the NCAA championship, which they won the following year, a team without Ruz but with 3 other Miracle workers: Silk, O'Callahan and a goalie named Jim Craig. The point of this is that while Ruz looked a generation or two from his playing form, his coach was still at it, grinding out a wildly entertaining Holiday Festival win in the big Apple, 2-1 in overtime over a game Cornell club.
Eruzione played for JACKIE Parker, the brash coach with his signature plaid jacket who took over for the legendary Jack Kelly and never missed a beat, winning his own national championship in 1978 and again in 1995 and 2009. Now in his fifth decade at the helm of the Terriers, it's a more refined JACK Parker, lopping a syllable off his first name and planting the red plaid sports jacket in the back of the cedar closet. But never underestimate Parker's energy, his ability to process information or his knack for getting the best from stripe shirted officials. He still gets out three sentences in the time it takes you to utter one, and his passion for the game remains torrid.
At the conclusion of Red Hot Hockey, a Thanksgiving event that seems destined for a long run on Broadway, Parker had no intention of leaving the stage until he had shared celebratory waves with all four corners of yet another hockey Garden, 200 miles south of the Boston version where he wins Beanpot titles with such regularity. Perhaps the only downer of the night was that his coaching counterpart, Cornell's Mike Schafer, had blown off the traditional handshake, sulking off the ice without his team because he was upset over a disallowed goal in the third period.
Imagine a respected rival coach like BC's Jerry York pulling off a stunt like that--unthinkable. Boston hockey media would hold him accountable for years to come. When B.U. lost a crushing Beanpot consolation game last spring to Harvard--talk about unthinkable--Parker humbly stood in line to shake with Ted Donato. Schafer, a coaching institution in the isolated gorges of Ithaca, New York, should observe and learn from the class act of Parker, the elder statesman of Division I college coaches.
