“FIGHT NIGHT AT THE GARDEN” and “SWEET LOU AT THE BUZZER”
#848/#847
848. NEW YORK RANGERS VS PHILADELPHIA FLYERS
STANLEY CUP SEMIFINAL
GAME THREE
APRIL 25, 1974
MADISON SQUARE GARDEN
QUALITY OF PLAY—8.03
DRAMA—6.87
STAR POWER—7.01
CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—7.25
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—6.60
LOCAL IMPACT—7.52
TOTAL: 43.27
“FIGHT NIGHT AT THE GARDEN”
The Broad Street Bullies, aka the mid-70s Philadelphia Flyers, have gone down in history as one of hockey’s most colorful teams, a brawling bunch exemplified by the hard fists of Dave “The Hammer” Schultz and the missing teeth of Bobby Clarke. But their Oakland Raiders-esque mystique often clouds the success on the ice. Under coach Fred Shero the Flyers went to three straight Stanley Cup finals, winning the first two, beginning in 1974.
That year there was an impediment in Philly’s path in the semifinal round, one wearing blue and white and calling Madison Square Garden home. Few seriously expected the ’74 Rangers to make any kind of playoff run, but when the Blueshirts took out the defending champions from Montreal in the opening round of the eight-team postseason, things changed. The City turned strongly behind the Rangers, and despite being markedly inferior to the Flyers in the regular season, many pundits liked their chances. “Finesse over Fury” was one prediction before the series began, and certainly those who preferred their hockey aesthetic and not bloody were solidly in New York’s corner.
Clarke, for one, gave not a whit about those puritans. As Mark Mulvoy put it in Sports Illustrated, “The next person who tells Bobby Clarke that the Philadelphia Flyers are a band of bullies, karate choppers, backstabbers and pugs who play hockey with spiked helmets, shivs and brass knuckles, will receive a mouthful of elbow for his comments. Dave Schultz' elbow. That, Clarke insists, is a promise. ‘I've listened to that jazz all year,’ he says, ‘and I've had it. You don't have to be a genius to figure out what we do on the ice. We take the shortest route to the puck and arrive in ill humor. But, tell me, if we're so bad, why haven't they locked us up?’”
Not enough constables who can skate, most likely.
Certainly the Rangers offered scarce artistry to combat the Flyers’ rambunctiousness in the first two games, played at the Philly Spectrum. The home team blasted New York 4-0 and 5-2 while putting a beating on the hated New Yorkers, Five Points-style. "Hockey is a contact sport for men," Schultz said after the first brutal game. "It's not an ice ballet or the Ice Follies. I'd be lost on a finesse team like New York."
For decades ice shows like the Follies interfered with playoff games in Madison Square Garden, so it was fitting the series returned there for what was meant to be an artistic display on the frozen water for Game Three, held on Thursday night, April 25, 1974. But the sellout crowd that expected a dazzling display from the likes of Rod Gilbert and Brad Park were instead treated to a throwback to the days when the Garden was the fight capital of the world.
In fairness, the fans were a major part of the reason why. Beginning hours before the puck dropped, the capacity crowd of 17,500 were howling for blood. “The city should be a more peaceful place today, as the fans rid themselves of a lot of aggression, trying to imitate the Flyers’ violence,” thought Parton Keese in the Times. “Yelling, hurling objects onto the ice, spilling beer over the players and taunting them through the glass, the spectators acted no worse than the players, who had forgotten after a while that the purpose of hockey was to put a puck in the net, not to injure the other guy.”
Philly did what they did from the start, with Schultz dropping the gloves with Park just two minutes into the game. While Park was held down by the ref, the Hammer buried a multitude of shots to Park’s stomach. Somehow he only received five for fighting, but when he gave the choke sign to the ref he was given an additional ten-minute misconduct. Nevertheless, the bullying style went according to form for the first half of the game, as Philadelphia built a 3-1 lead. Rick MacLeish was the scoring star of the playoffs, and his eighth goal of the postseason opened the scoring. The immortally named Moose Dupont beat Eddie Giacomin with a snapshot to make it 2-0, and after Walt Tkaczuk got one for the Rangers, a deflected pass went past Giacomin to extend the lead back to two goals. A sweep of the series seemed in the offing.
Then, suddenly, the whole game turned. “We just died,” said Clarke. Steve Vickers scored on the power play to make it 3-2, setting up an emotional moment as Vic Hadfield, the Rangers captain whose ankle injury had forced him to sit out most of the playoffs, returned to the ice. Immediately he was plastered by Clarke, but Hadfield got up and angled a pass from Gilbert past goalie Bernie Parent to tie the game. The roar from the liquored-up Rangers faithful was a cannonade that rolled up Broadway.
As the Flyers died the Rangers rose from the ashes (even though Easter had come and gone two weeks earlier). “They rallied and retaliated, winning…all the remaining battles,” Mulvoy wrote in SI. “Ron Harris ran [Philly’s Bob “Mad Dog”] Kelly into the boards, and Steve Vickers pasted Gary Dornhoefer. Park decked the Flyers' MacLeish with a short overhand punch to the head.” Park, better known for his strong play than his strong fists, took a second whack at a blocked shot and sent it whirling past Parent to put NY ahead. Gilbert made it four unanswered goals with a slapper from between the circles.
Down 5-3, the Flyers abandoned any hope of winning in favor of a goon show, and the Rangers happily obliged them. Ina span of two minutes of game time there were three major brannigans, resulting in a pair of Flyers, including Schultz, getting booted from the contest. Harris’ hit on Kelly was more of a flying tackle that tore knee ligaments in Mad Dog’s leg, rendering him unusable for the rest of the postseason. In all, there were 109 penalty minutes, and a renewed sense that the Rangers could match the Bullies, clenched fist for clenched fist. Indeed, it may be the only way to defeat the Brotherly Lovers.
As the game ended in a 5-3 Rangers win, a frustrated Parent, egged on by the howling fans behind the glass, smashed his goalie stick into tiny little pieces, as though trying to brain each Ranger fan who had made his life a misery over the previous three hours and three minutes personally.
AFTERMATH:
The Rangers evened the series in the next game on an overtime goal by Gilbert, and then traded 4-1 pastings on home ice to set up a decisive Game Seven. Right wing Gary Dornhoefer scored the last two goals for Philly as they held on for a tense 4-3 win to advance to the Cup Finals. There, they won the franchise’s first title in six games over the Boston, and went on to repeat in 1975.
WHAT THEY SAID:
“Something’s wrong—this can’t be hockey.”
—Brad Park, Rangers defenseman
FURTHER READING:
“It’s Sockey, The Way They Play It Here,” by Mark Mulvoy, Sports Illustrated
VIDEO:
847. ST. JOHNS REDMEN VS UTAH UTES
NIT TOURNAMENT QUARTERFINAL
MARCH 15, 1958
MADISON SQUARE GARDEN
QUALITY OF PLAY—5.89
DRAMA—8.77
STAR POWER—5.03
CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—8.55
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—6.28
LOCAL IMPACT—8.77
TOTAL: 43.28
“SWEET LOU AT THE BUZZER”
In the days when the National Invitation Tournament was the biggest postseason event in college basketball, St. John’s was a key component on an annual basis. Starting with the days of the “Wonder Five’ (see #997) and into the Joe Lapchick era, the Redmen helped turn NYC into the capital of hoops. The Johnnies won back-to-back titles during the war, 1943-44, and were a seemingly annual participant at the Garden in the spring.
But by the 1958 the NCAA tournament had begun to supplant the NIT, and St. John’s was in a fallow period. They hadn’t been in the NIT in five long seasons, a period of time that coincided with the school moving from Brooklyn to Queens and, more significantly, the departure of head coach Frank McGuire, who left the SJU sideline for North Carolina and considerable success. Assistant Al “Dusty” DeStefano took over, but the team foundered under his leadership. In 1956, Lapchick returned to St. John’s, having left the gig coaching the Knicks in midtown Manhattan. Soon after, the Redmen began to return to form.
They finished 20-6 in 1957-58, a strong enough record, but weren’t considered especially potent. Named to the 12-team NIT field as something of a sop to Lapchick and his good name, SJU was an underdog to Butler in the opening round. But the Reds won convincingly, setting up a quarterfinal game against Utah as part of an all-day quadruple header at the old Garden on March 15, 1958. 7,998 turned out for the second game, an early afternoon matchup. In the opener, Xavier shocked top-seeded Niagara, despite an incredible 41-point, 21-rebound performance by Boo Ellis of the Purple Eagles. The X-Men ran off ten straight over the last couple of minutes to pull away from the one-man gang from Niagara.
Against Utah the Redmen played “New York basketball,” defined by Dana Mazley in the Daily News as “fine ball handling, hustling defense and intelligent shooting”, and it was good enough to run out to a 36-29 halftime lead. Gus Alfieri, who would lead the Redmen with 25 points, dominated the first 20 minutes, along with Al Seiden, St. John’s leading scorer. As the second half opened, Utah surprised the Johnnies with a box and one defense, with one man on Seiden while the rest of the Utes played zone. Seiden, his ego challenged by the ploy, began to force shots, and few went in. This allowed Utah to mount a comeback.
“Blond sharpshooter” Milt Kane poured in several long jumpers to force a 59-all tie, and as the minutes ticked away, the game remained close. Free throws were made and, more often, missed, including a pair of front ends of one-and-ones in the final moments by Keith Ancell of Utah with his team ahead by one, 70-69. Seiden got the rebound of the latterly miss and drove to the basket, only for Utah’s DeLyle Condie to steal it from him with a remarkable defense play. With ten seconds left, Utah called time and prepped a play to kill the final seconds.
Incredibly, however, Ancell—“a nice-looking soph from Denver” per the Daily News— couldn’t get the ball inbounds, and Utah was called for a five-second count. Given the gifted opportunity, the Johnnies designed a play not for the winded and ice cold Seiden but for Alfieri, who missed with three seconds left. But 6’6” junior pivotman Lou Roethel, whose glasses and hustling style made him an early progenitor for Kurt Rambis, grabbed the miss, took a large step back, and flipped up his trademark hook shot as the buzzer sounded. The ball swished through the net as the sound echoed across the Garden, and the Redmen had won, 71-70.
Roethel finished with 11 points and 16 rebounds, numbers that meant little to him as he was mobbed by his teammates and the diehards from Queens in attendance.
AFTERMATH:
The buzz from the buzzer beater didn’t carry over to the semifinals, as Dayton crushed the Johnnies 80-56. Dayton lost the subsequent final, an all-Ohio battle with Xavier. In 1959 Lapchick’s rebuild of the program was complete, and the Johnnies won a third NIT title, in double-overtime over Bradley.
WHAT THEY SAID:
“The New York collegiate basketball picture got a little brighter yesterday as St. John’s University…stole the spotlight at the NIT at MSG.”
William J. Briordy, The New York Times
FURTHER READING:
Lapchick by Gus Alfieri
VIDEO:
https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=1292212&facet_setname_s=%22uum_bvc%22