Beanpot '82: Eagles Fall in Final Again

If last year's Beanpot demonstrated anything, it was that there really is some intangible qualitative difference between the early and the late games.

It's what you'd intuitively guess, anyway. Six p.m. is no time to be playing hockey--fans catch dinner first and the Garden doesn't fill up until well into the third period. But with the late game, there's a sense of great anticipation--with over 10,000 on hand just to watch the warmups, more than at most pro games, the adrenaline really starts to flow.

True to form, the Boston Garden at dinnertime on the first two Mondays of February 1982 was not the place to be. Unless, perhaps, you were a rabid Harvard-hater and enjoyed watching the Crimson lose even in amazingly boring style. The opener versus B.U. was a 5-1 Terrier rout even less close than the score indicated. Jack Parker's men checked Harvard relentlessly, slowing down the Cantabs until they looked like zombies on ice.

And the next week, even Northeastern's rally from a three-goal deficit and its eventual overtime victory managed to be less than inspiring. In past years, when fans filed in for the late game and saw Northeastern playing they took interest and cheered on the Huskies. This time the opener met with massive indifference. Appropriately, it ended with a whimper, not a bang, when Jim Averill's off-speed shot dribbled past Harvard's backup goalie.

The two late games, on the other hand, were the kind of games you talk about when trying to explain to out-of-towners why the Beanpot is one of the top events in college sports. Interestingly, both games involved Boston College and the only goaltender to play two full games in last year's tournament, the Eagles' Bob O'Connor.

Several things about O'Connor combined to make him one of college hockey's most exciting players. First of all, he was just plain good; he was blessed with the lightning-fast reflexes goalies can't afford to pick up on the job. Also, his style was not designed to make Coach Len Ceglarski breathe easier. He gave up rebounds casually, seemingly aiming to please the fans by making more mindboggling saves (and running up his save average to over .900 in the process).

Finally, he was physically strong, especially down close to the ice. In warmups he would at one point put his stick aside and have his teammates blast low shots at him, which he would practice stopping with his stick-hand blocker. In a game, he could often stop a low shot and no amount of jamming or pushing could shove the disk any further.

With 2:32 left in the opener against Northeastern last year, an irresistible force in the form of two Husky forwards, one Eagle defenseman and the puck hurtied into the immovable object of O'Connor. No red light appeared, and the contest ultimately ended in a B C overtime victory.

If there was any chink in his armor, it was up high, especially right under the crossbar. Just ask Wayne Turner, who lifted one over a flopping O'Connor in 1980 for the biggest goal in Husky history. Or ask Harvard's Dave Burke, whose insurance goal in the waning minutes of the '81 final made an unforgettable clang as it caromed off the bar and into the net. Or ask Burke's teammate Mike Watson, who scored the last goal O'Connor gave up in college hockey into the top of the net in the ECAC playoffs last March.

The imperfect Beanpot career of the B.C. star ended (though we couldn't know it at the time) last February 8 under the opslaught of an inspired Terrier attack led by Tom O'Regan, who scored two goals and screened O'Connor on another. The Beanpot careers of 12 Eagle seniors came to their ill-fated ends in a fourth straight runner-up finish.

The efforts of the B.C. skaters, trying so hard--maybe too hard--and coming up just short, were encapsuled by Billy O'Dwyer's last offensive gasp, a late breakaway attempt that had B.U.'s Clcon Daskalakis on his knees before the sophomore netminder swatted the puck away with his glove.

The final scenes were of O'Connor glumly skating across center ice to collect his Eberly Trophy as the best goalie, and then, as on every second Monday night in February since 1979, of the Eagles watching another team accept the Beanpot.