Eagles win a wild Hockey East final

Just when I thought nothing could top the Hockey East semifinals on Friday, along comes Saturday's final, one of the best college hockey games I've ever witnessed!

BC overcomes Maine comeback, wins title in OT

BOSTON – The Maine Black Bears started their 2009-10 campaign with a bonding exercise, climbing the state's tallest peak, 5,267-foot Mount Katahdin. It was a harbinger for the season, as Maine faced a near-constant uphill battle, starting with low expectations (picked to finish 8th in the preseason polls) and continuing with a rash of injuries, and later suspensions, to key starters. But Tim Whitehead's squad persevered, battling to the regular season's final whistle, sneaking into the 4th place. Even then, they needed to come from behind to beat UMass Lowell to take their quarterfinal series, 2-1, sending them to Boston, where the Black Bears dispatched the BU Terriers 5-2 on Friday.

Ultimately, though, the one obstacle the Black Bears (19-17-3) failed to scale was the team from The Heights. Boston College (25-10-3) went 2-0-1 against Maine during the regular season. And on Saturday, at the Hockey East finals, Jerry York's squad from Chestnut Hill ended the Black Bears year in heartbreaking fashion, surviving a furious Maine comeback to win, 7-6, on an overtime strike by senior Matt Lombardi.

"Sometimes the hero comes out of obscurity to become the MVP and a real difference maker," said York of Lombardi. "I'm so excited for Matt, who has worked extremely hard for four years. To get rewarded like that is pretty special."

The game-but-outgunned Black Bears never led in the game, but they never quit, either. In the end, however, all they succeeded in doing was setting the stage for Lombardi, who picked the perfect night to record his first collegiate hat trick, securing tournament MVP honors in the process. In the overtime session, Maine came at the Eagles, taking several long-range shots that missed the target. BC nearly closed it out at the 5-minute mark, but Maine's Dave Wilson denied Steve Whitney's bullet with a lightning-quick glove save. Twenty seconds later, BC captain Matt Price chipped the puck low. Lombardi went and got it, and drove to the net, jamming it through Wilson for the game-winner.

"Matty (Price) was talking about how hard it is to get to the top of the mountain," said a smiling Jimmy Hayes, who registered a goal and an assist for the Eagles during regulation. "There's only room for one team on top of the mountain, and it's just unbelievable when you're up there."

The title marked the 9th league championship for the Eagles, and the third in the past four years. But it didn't come easy.

Maine twice climbed out of a one-goal hole to finish the first period knotted with the high-flying Eagles, 2-2, despite being outshot 16-8. From the opening faceoff, the Eagles were the aggressor, launching a fuselage of shots at Maine's Wilson. The senior netminder – arguably Maine's MVP through its playoff run after stepping into the starter's role, posting a 1.47 goals against average and .938 save percentage though the first four playoff games (compiling a 3-1-0 mark) – stonewalled BC through the first 11 minutes.

At the 11:44 mark, BC burst Wilson's bubble. With the Eagles on the power play, Pat Mullane sent a perfect pass to BC defenseman Carl Sneep at the right point. Sneep's slapshot scorched past a Maine defender and beat Wilson gloveside, just inside the right post. Maine, though, responded 24 seconds later. Captain Tanner House, storming straight through the slot, took a low shot that Muse bobbled. Charging hard to the net, Maine's leading scorer Gustav Nyquist tapped it past Muse to knot the score, 1-1.

BC's Lombardi gave the Eagles a 2-1 lead at the 15:19 mark on a wacky goal. Lombardi beat Wilson to a loose puck and managed to chip it past the Maine goalie. Black Bear defenseman Mark Nemec, grabbed the puck while sliding on his backside, but couldn't stop his momentum, and both he and the biscuit ended in the Maine net.

And again, Maine answered, almost immediately. Freshman Joey Diamond, one of Maine's brightest stars this weekend, parked in front of the BC net and deftly redirected a backhander by Maine defensemen Jeff Dimmen past Muse.

"We're proud of how our guys competed and the poise we showed under pressure down the stretch," said Whitehead. "There certainly wasn't any quit in our team."

In the second period, the Eagles managed to put some distance on Maine, scoring two unanswered goals in the first six minutes. BC's Joe Whitney struck first at 1:39 during on a power play opportunity, snapping a shot from the left point through a screen set by teammate Ben Smith and past Wilson's block. At 5:25, BC's Lombardi got his second goal of the game (and his first multi-point game of the season) to give the Eagles a 4-2 cushion. Senior captain Matt Price ripped a shot wide from above the right faceoff circle that Wilson overplayed. The rebound came off the backboard to Lombardi, who wrested it through a Maine defender, the shot deflecting off Wilson's gloves as he tried to scramble back into the net.

However, an uncharacteristic BC parade to the penalty box (six minors) allowed the Black Bears to sneak back into the game. Following a monster 5-on-3 penalty kill by the Eagles, highlighted by tenacious team defense and Muse's quick glove hand, Maine got within a goal at 15:04. House set up residence directly at the top of the crease, took a tape-to-tape feed from Nyquist, and blasted it past Muse's left pad to finish a superb bang-bang play. The penalty parade also helped put the clamps on BC's offense over the second half of the second stanza, as the Black Bears outgunned the Eagles, 16-5.

"Our plan was to not take penalties," said York, noting that Maine came into the final touting the nation's most potent power play. "We're were shooting ourselves in the foot the entire second period."

The first two periods, however, proved to be only a prelude to a rollicking third stanza. After an uneventful first five minutes, BC's Hayes gave the Eagles a two-goal cushion at 5:16 with a slick spin-o-rama move to Wilson's left. Using his body to shield the puck, Hayes swept it on net and through Wilson. Three minutes later, the Black Bears started mounting yet another comeback. Maine's David de Kastrozza, pouncing on a puck that had ricocheted from behind the net, sent a laser past Muse's right ear to bring Maine within one.

At 14:23, Lombardi floated a soft shot on goal that Maine's Dimmen couldn't collect. BC's Barry Almeida, camped in front, did, and showing exceptional poise, pulled it wide of Wilson's left pad and tucked the puck inside the right post to give the Eagles a seemingly commanding 6-4 lead.

Maine, showing its trademark resiliency, kept battling. After a brief delay to replace a pane of Plexiglas, but only 26 seconds following Almeida's goal, the Black Bears scored again, Maine's Robby Dee sent an offensive zone faceoff back to Spencer Abbott, who cracked a seeing-eye shot that beat Muse over his blocker. Then, with less than 30 ticks left on the clock, Diamond potted his second with a sparkling move. Grabbing the puck from a scramble in the low slot, Diamond outwaited Muse and roofed a wrister to send the game into overtime.

"The captains came up [during the break before OT] and just told us to play a fearless game, and not be afraid to make mistakes," said BC's Hayes.

From there, Lombardi, the senior assistant captain from Milton, Mass., with only seven goals in 140 career games, lit the lamp one last time to complete his hat trick, culminating an MVP performance and knocking the Black Bears out of NCAA consideration.

"This really propels us into the national tournament," said York. "The Lamoriello Cup (the Hockey East championship trophy) is something we point toward, but the national tournament and the national trophy is really what we aim for. And we're going to go in there with guns blazing."

The Black Bears, meanwhile, are left to ponder what might have been, coming within a whisker of making the NCAA field, and to look ahead for another mountain to climb. "It stings really bad," said House, Maine's junior captain. "We want to be back here next year."

FINIS

Unfinished business ...

Boston, bright & brisk

This has to be one of my favorite stories of 2010, and I aim to get a more in-depth piece written for one of the bigger players in the sports world. However, this short advance, done for New York Magazine (the online version is here), definitely should give you a flavor. The following is the original draft, which I think has a little more color.

The Best of Times, hockey-style

Remember "The Best of Times," the 1986 comedy with Robin Williams as an aging banker who couldn't forgive himself for dropping the touchdown pass (thrown perfectly by Kurt Russell, naturally) that cost his teammates, and town, bragging rights against their arch rival? Now combine it with Paul Newman's hockey classic, "Slap Shot," and you have an inkling of what Scott Williams was thinking when the light bulb went off.

Williams's inspiration, and persistence, has resulted to a truly unique athletic endeavor. On April 3, at the Mennen Arena in Morristown, NJ, former members of the Delbarton Green Wave and the St. Joseph's Green Knights from Montvale will face off against one another, 21 years after they were originally set to play for in the state hockey title game in 1989. Williams was a senior on that St. Joseph's squad that was one win away from being crowned the state champion that year. The key difference between the fictional football teams from "The Best of Times" and the members of the 1989 Delbarton and St. Joe's hockey teams, is that the latter never got to play their championship game.

In one of the strangest episodes in New Jersey high school sports history, a measles outbreak at Delbarton forced a cancellation of the 1989 finals. Which is a shame, because that championship game was shaping up to be a dandy. St. Joe's (24-2-1) and Debarton's Green Wave (24-3-2) were the two top ranked teams in the state, with two of the state's best players, St. Joe's Kenny Blum and Delbarton's Derek Maguire (both of whom would be drafted in the 9th round of the NHL draft that spring).

"Nobody believed it at first," says Williams, who heard the news from his coach, Ron Skibin. "Remember, there's no Internet, no cell phones. The grapevine had to work. Until we went to school that Monday, I don't think we all grasped what it meant. We were saying, 'Did this weekend just happen? Weren't we supposed to play the game?' And on Monday, it was over. That's it. The state couldn't pull that off today, because parents and lawyers would be all over them to reschedule it."

Instead, after the game was simply cancelled. The NJSIAA's executive committee declared the two teams co-champions, and the season was relegated to some dust-covered record book. Then, last March, the Star Ledger newspaper ran a story on the 20th anniversary of the championship game that never happened. The seed for Williams' brainstorm was planted when Delbarton's Mike Pendy, an assistant captain on the '89 team, was quoted as saying: "Maybe we could get all these guys together 20 years later, lace up the skates somewhere and play that game."

That comment got Pendy's former teammates talking, and joking, but not much more came of it. Williams, however, had other plans. He wanted to play the game. "I knew I just needed to get a hold of someone on Delbarton," he says. "Hockey in New Jersey is a small world, and someone said get in touch with Jim Olsen. We talked, hit it off, and said 'Let's do this.' The wheels got in motion, and before we knew it, it was on."

James Olsen, a former linemate of Pendy's at Delbarton, was initially unsure about staging the game, until Williams talked about earmarking the proceeds for cancer-related charities, including the NHL's Hockey Fights Cancer. That plan struck a nerve.

"Scott's mom was suffering from brain cancer, and he recently did a fundraiser for her to cover some medical bills. He said this could be a great story, and at the same time we could raise some money for charity and have a lot of fun and bring everybody together," says Olsen. "I just thought that was outstanding. Coincidentally, my father passed away from brain cancer five years ago. So I thought, this guy really wants to do a nice job with this. It could be really terrific."

Now, the game – dubbed the Frozen Flashback – is etched in stone, or at least on everyone's Blackberry calendar. "It's going to be a blast," says Olsen. "This is not going to be a nasty grudge match. We're going to play hard, and it's going to be competitive, but it's going to be clean." Or, as Maguire, who played at Harvard and now lives outside Boston, says: "I don't see the game getting out of hand. Heck, we're not high school kids anymore. We'll have our families – our wives and kids – in the stands."

Pendy says the fact that game actually came together is a testament to the two schools, and to the game itself. Almost 90 percent, or 40 or the original 46 players from 1989, are expected to suit up. Each team will be allowed five subs, to help offset roster shortfalls, provided they are alumni, and graduated prior to 1989. "Our entire team has been contacted, and the interest level is high," says Pendy. "Some guys have been playing, and some guys are running out to buy equipment."

The game, as Pendy predicted, is likely to be slower, and will also be less physical, thanks to the no-check rules that both sides have agreed to. But make no mistake; these guys still want to win. "From every aspect, and every angle, this is just setting up to be a home-run event," says Pendy. Or, to put it in the proper vernacular, an overtime winner. Which it might come down to, as no one will even consider the game ending in a draw.

"I don't think we can let it go," says Olsen, laughing. "We'll have to keep playing."

Blum, who played professionally until 2004, readily agrees that a tie won't work. "I don't think anybody would want that," he says. "Other than the charity part, that would be defeating the purpose."

That purpose, say the players, is to not only raise money for a worthwhile cause, but to put on a show for the 2,500 expected to be in attendance and, yes, to put the 1989 season to rest. "The great thing about playing at Mennen, is that the place was packed for our games," says Olsen. "It was a great experience, being on the ice in front of those crowds, and we have one more opportunity to do it."

For details on the April 3 game, or to contribute to the respective charities, visit FrozenFlashback.com.