You have to hand it to the hockey players who lived through the historic Beanpot blizzard. Even when history unrelated to game action seized the spotlight, it could not induce brain freeze to the student-athletes itching for action inside.
Surely they were mindful of any reports that caught their ear before they entered the Boston Garden for their Feb. 6, 1978 game. And they were naturally not going to escape the record snow accumulations and everything that came with it when they stepped back out into the real world.
They were simply too absorbed in the artificial snow they manufactured on the indoor ice. Mother Nature could make as many memories — for better or worse — for the non-skating attendees as she pleased.
But for the padded personnel and their professors of puck, this was still the annual bid for civic bragging rights. It was a way of setting a tone for the homestretch of the regular season. It was the uniquely New England way of whetting one’s appetite for bigger hardware in the postseason.
This was the event that would later provide the only non-postseason college hockey scores on the ESPN family’s BottomLine.
The bottom line for Boston College: Feb. 6, 1978 was a mortifying evening. Archrival Boston University cruised to a 12-5 triumph in the Beanpot’s semifinal nightcap.
That seven-goal margin tied for the fifth-widest in the tournament’s 27-year history. It was the widest in any Beanpot edition of the Battle of Commonwealth Avenue.
Maybe that was why Joe Augstine, BC’s prolific playmaking blueliner that year, had mostly Bill Belichikian thoughts on the event.
“No idea it was snowing that heavy,” Augustine, now the coach of the University of Rhode Island’s club program, told Pucks and Recreation. “I didn’t know anything about the storm.”
Whether anyone heard them or not, the Eagles and Terriers could not claim there were no warnings when they left. Trouble was, while a nor’easter was an undoubted possibility, there was only so much previewing and preparation available.
Journalistic and historical accounts of that Monday are mixed. But the brunt of the blizzard was not battering Boston for certain until between the Harvard-Northeastern and BC-BU cards.
By nightfall on Feb. 6, 1978, Boston cabs could have had a competitive race with the Garden’s Zamboni, the only vehicle in town running on schedule.
Worst-case scenario aside, every Garden-goer carried on. Contrast that with 1983 and 2015, when tournament officials shrewdly pushed the semifinals off for a day.
For the one time that taught them their lesson, the Beanpot was blessed with the presence of a gifted wordsmith. Bill Scheft, a Boston native who went on to write for David Letterman and pen Sports Illustrated’s “The Show,” was a beat reporter for the Harvard Crimson at the time.
For the up-and-coming chronicler, the day’s initial aura of normalcy was the extent of his unremarkable memory bank. Ample deposits were soon to come, but a lack of cable and Twitter meant a lack of a prelude.
“I’m sure others have made this point, but in 1978, weather was not programming,” Scheft wrote in an e-mail to Pucks and Rec.
“And weather forecasting was inaccurate as a rule. I have zero recollection of anything other than it was a cold day.”
Hey, it was just hockey weather, right? Perfect for putting more than 11,000 ticketholders in the mood for cold, hard rivalry action. (Other accounts hold that the 13,909-seat house on Causeway Street drew a standing room-only audience that day.)
The way the predetermined semifinal assignments shook out, the Crimson-Huskies matchup was tantamount to a mediocre appetizer. Harvard was on its way to a 12-14-0 finish, NU a 10-17-1 transcript. BC and BU, who would meet in the national final two months later, were among the top dogs in the ECAC standings.
On paper, Game 1 was anyone’s bid for the right to play the prop in the Feb. 13 final. The loser would get the same role on the same day, except with an unlikely third-place distinction at stake.
But to their credit, the Crimson and Huskies flexed their thirst and lived up to their slim-to-no-gap caliber. A resultant 3-3 regulation deadlock prompted an extra intermission, along with droves of inconvenience.
With Game 1 having commenced at 6 p.m., Game 2 was supposed to begin at 9, but overtime meant TBD for BU and BC.
“Anytime a game goes into OT, it throws you off a bit because the ending is unknown,” offered Augustine.
By the final quarter of the third period, one notion was dawning on the people in press row. While crafting his on-the-fly account of the game, Scheft heard co-worker Peter “Fritz” McLoughlin relay a weather advisory.
“‘Schefty, we gotta get out of here. I heard there’s a blizzard coming that’s going to be the worst in history.’ That was the first I heard of it, and I remember not really thinking anything of it.”
Hey, he still had a job to do as well, even banking on a rare treat in the form of media availability.
An estimated foot of snow had already accumulated by the end of Game 1. That count had doubled by the time the nightcap was through. (Photo by Barbara Alper/Getty Images)
“Between 1972 and ’79, no Harvard hockey game story in the Crimson had quotes,” he recalled. “Billy Cleary, the coach, had boycotted talking to the paper because he had told the Crimson that star forward Dave Hynes (who later played for the Bruins) had been suspended from the team when he had in fact been flunked out of school. He rarely made his players available after games. Whenever I interviewed players back then, it was in their room.
“But here is where it gets interesting. Fritz went down after regulation and saw Cleary come back out of the locker room, stop and talk to whoever was there from the Globe and Herald. He overheard what he said about the game so far, and the chances they had missed. He came running back up and was so excited that he was going to get a Cleary quote into his color piece and break the boycott!
“Unfortunately, by the time we got back to the composing room, it was skeleton crew and they decided to just put the top on my game story (with I believe no photo) and do the press run.”
Come what may, Gene Purdy gave Harvard the victory in the second minute of sudden death. At the moment, the Crimson faithful were only thinking about moving on to Step 2 in their defense of the 1977 Beanpot laurel. The Crimson staffers were salivating over the prospect of delivering compelling news amidst a letdown of a 1977-78 season.
“I had called in 80 percent of my game story,” said Scheft, “and I would have plenty of time to do my lede back at the paper.”
But the way Mother Nature took hold, Game 1 might as well have spilled to a second overtime. On a normal night, a drive from downtown to the Harvard campus would take 15 minutes. Scheft and company would have thus been home by the time the Eagles and Terriers had adjourned between warmups and the first period.
Instead, that opening stanza was in full swing, if not already over, by the time Scheft’s cab fulfilled its task. It could have had a competitive race with the Garden’s Zamboni, the only vehicle in town running on schedule.
“Fritz and I walk out and it is like something in a movie. It felt as if there was already a foot on the ground. We were about to walk over to the Red Line, but we see a lone cab. We literally got the last cab out of the Garden. He crawls 15 mph back to Cambridge. I think it took us an hour.”
One game in the books, one foot on the ground. By the time the BC-BU bout was through, both of those counts had doubled.
Conversely, the cabs and all means of transportation other than team buses dwindled to a shutout. Those who did not heed the public-address warning of the MBTA train service’s last call were shut in.
According to most accounts, roughly 200 spectators were stranded. The Bruins and Celtics facilities functioned as bedrooms. Leftover concessions proved enough sustenance for the balance of the week.
“Harvard closed for the first time in something like 330 years.” – Bill Scheft
Oh, and that Feb. 13 final? It turned into a March 1 final. Among Beanpot-goers, the lack of normalcy took its greatest toll on those looking to build upon or rebound from the results on the ice from Feb. 6. Augustine’s Eagles were arguably more entitled to a craving for redemption than their eventual consolation-game rivals from NU.
“Boring!” lamented Augustine, a Chicago native, of the storm’s aftermath around Chestnut Hill. “Nothing to do and couldn’t get anywhere.”
It was not exactly hockey weather after all. Skiing, perhaps, for local daredevils, but it was otherwise marathons of card games from Causeway to Cambridge.
“Harvard closed for the first time in something like 330 years,” Scheft recalled. “When I wasn’t at the Crimson (which was a block up the street from Quincy House, where I lived) I was playing poker in Jared Levine’s room. Jared was a year ahead of me and became a giant entertainment lawyer. He was my lawyer until he realized I wasn’t a giant in entertainment.
“I think for the three days, I wound up down $60. Which is like winning.”
The rest of New England should have been so lucky. The snowfall itself would not cease in earnest until at least midday Tuesday, Feb. 8. Per blizzardof78.org, Boston would brook 27.1 inches in accumulation. Tragically, the region traced 99 deaths back to the conditions.
The storm’s unofficial commemorative site concludes, “The Blizzard of ’78 was many things to many people: tragedy to some, a coming-together and winter fun for others.”
But the coincidental coming-together of Boston’s four Division I hockey programs likely lent the event its most outstanding element of uniqueness. Puckheaded perfect strangers inevitably bonded when their passion for the sport and their schools locked them in.
Not that they should necessarily envy those who dodged a case of Causeway cabin fever.
“People think only a certain type of person goes to Harvard,” said Scheft. “Not true. I met a lot of guys from the streets in my four years there. Good Will Hunting-type guys who didn’t give a (hoot). They would have gotten us out.
“It might have taken hot-wiring the Zamboni, strapping a net to the front upside down and making a new entrance to North Station, but it would have happened.”
Leave a Reply