Boston Hockey: A Day in the Life

Saturday, January 16, 1988--one day in the life of Boston ice hockey.

A group of children are suiting up at the MDC rink in Brighton, about a mile and a half away from Harvard Stadium. Once of countless Saturday morning youth hockey games is about to begin.

That week, the commissioner of youth and high-school hockey in Massachusetts had issued dire warnings about the prevalence of misconduct by youth hockey players. In the following week, the commissioner's suspicions seemed to have been well-founded. Twenty two-game suspensions and two one year suspensions were doled out in one seven-day period, matching the number of suspensions that had been handed out in the first half of the season.

No wrongdoing occurred in this youth hockey game. Just a lot of awkward Seven-year-old kids, sprawling all over the place and not seeming to miss their Saturday-morning cartoons.

The Boston Bruins played in venerable Boston Garden that afternoon against the Philadelphia Flyers. And you know what that usually means.

But on this night, the Flyers came out storming in the first period playing clean, European-style hockey. And the fans wanted the Bruins to check hard, even when they were a man down. But the urgings of the crowd cost the Bruins. Once on a shorthanded stint, Steve Kasper tried to take the body--and missed. For the next moment. the Flyers were essentially up by two men, and Mark Howe and Scott Mellanby for an easy goal.

And capping the Flyers' four-foal first-period effort was a beautiful air-pass from Howe to Ilkka Sinisalo, setting up a goal.

But as the second-period wore on, the Bruins players started getting angrier and angrier. The NHL interpretation of the game of hockey has its players not playing on guts, spirit or determination, but anger.

As a result, the Bruins were trying to "get" Ron Hextall, a shameless exercise which resulted in a couple of interference minors, but nothing else. For all the times the Bruins were violating Hextall's goal crease, it was surprising that the Flyers didn't try to "goon" Doug Keens according to the ancient reciprocal code.

In baseball, at least, if the pitcher on team "A" throws at a batter on team "B", he should expect a pitch at his head the next time he is at bat. The same code of conduct would apply more or less to hockey.

The by-product of the Bruins' dirty play was that they actually managed to outscore the Flyers, 4-2, in the last two periods. The big, bad Bruins won the battles on the ice, but lost the war on the scoreboard.

At Bright Hockey Center that evening, Boston College played top-ranked Maine in a Hockey East contest.

It was strange to see other teams playing on ice with the Veritas seal on it. But despite the journeyman existence though which B.C. has suffered for the past three years, they still maintained their tradition--coming out for the first period skatearound without their helmets.

Despite the fact the B.C. was playing in unfamiliar territory, it didn't stop them from giving the team from Orono all it could handle.

Boston College was holding the fort admirably around goalie David Littman, and the Eagles were able to send the game into overtime.