“MONARCHY OVER DEMOCRACY” and “THOSE BONNY LADS”
#916/#915
916. NEW YORK RANGERS VS WASHINGTON CAPITALS
EASTERN CONFERENCE QUARTERFINALS
GAME SIX
MAY 12, 2013
MADISON SQUARE GARDEN
QUALITY OF PLAY
7.16
DRAMA—6.41
STAR POWER—6.21
CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—6.65
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—7.23
LOCAL IMPACT—7.83
TOTAL: 42.59
“MONARCHY OVER DEMOCRACY”
The 2012 playoff encounter between New York and Washington was an epic seven game affair that saw tight contests all the way through. For an encore, the two teams met again in 2013, and once again, you could barely shine a flashlight between the them, so close were the games.
The Caps took the first two games at home, including Game Two, which went to overtime tied at 0-0 before Mike Green at last scored a goal. NY tied it with a pair at the Garden, both 4-3 finals. The Caps then won in overtime again, this time on Mike Ribiero’s goal, one that caused star goalie Henrik Lundquist to slam his stick on the ice in despair. Lundquist had won the 2012 Vezina Trophy as the best goaltender in the league, and was the runner-up in ’13. This Rangers team wasn’t nearly as strong as the year before, when they topped the East in points. For the most part, whatever the team accomplished they did because of The King.
So the Rangers had their backs against the wall when they hosted the redshirts in Game Six at the Garden on a glorious Sunday night, May 12, 2013. The home team got a friendly whistle but couldn’t take advantage. They had repeated attempts on the power play but were continually stymied, a pattern that dated back to the opener. The Rangers were 0-5 on the night and 2-26 in the first six games. In the first period a pair of minor penalties gave the Blueshirts a 5-on-3 advantage for 44 seconds but Braden Holtby, Washington’s netminder, kept the scoresheet clean.
After a scoreless first frame, the net finally twanged. Midway through the second period Derick Brassard slapped one off defenseman Steven Oleksy and past Holtby for New York’s lone goal.
“The crowd was chanting ‘shoot the puck!’” Brassard noted, in reaction to the Rangers overpassing. “I didn’t see myself giving a pass to one of my teammates there…I just took two steps and tried to rip it as hard as I could.” Brassard defined journeyman but was having a hot streak in the series, leading the team in points.
The one goal would be enough, thanks to Lundquist. In the third the Caps peppered away in frantic battle to tie it up, but The King stopped everything. “I can’t put into words to describe the saves he’s making,” marveled teammate Derek Stepan. “He continues to find ways to makes saves that are shocking.” Henrik made 12 of his 27 saves in the final period, as the tense MSG crowd nibbled their fingernails. The Caps great scorer and Putin apologist, Alex Ovechkin, shot a backhand in the desperate final seconds that seemed ticketed for the net, but that too was turned away.
The horn sounded, and before the Rangers could congratulate Lundquist on his seventh career playoff shutout, and his second in a potential elimination game, the teams commenced with a scrum, one instigated by Ovechkin when he boarded Dan Girardi with a nasty blindside hit. The two fought—but not with each other, as NY captain Ryan Callahan took the honor of duking it out with the Soviet. There were five fights going on at once, and the crowd was louder than it had been all night.
At last, the ice was cleared and Lundquist feted as the night’s top star.
AFTERMATH
After 13 straight tight games between these two, a rout was overdue, and it game in Game Seven. Lundquist pitched another shutout, his eighth, but this time he was backed with a relative frenzy of goals, five in all, as New York shocked the Verizon Center crowd and advanced to the next round. It was the first ever road victory in a Game Seven for the Blueshirts.
In the semis, eventual Eastern Conference champ Boston bounced the Rangers in five.
WHAT THEY SAID
“You lose two in overtime, you know you’re close. We know we can do it.”
—Henrik Lundquist
FURTHER READING:
“No Rest and No Margin of Error for the Rangers," Jeff Z. Klein, The New York Times
VIDEO:
915. SETON HALL PIRATES VS SAINT BONAVENTURE BONNIES
FEBRUARY 14, 1968
WALSH GYMNASIUM
QUALITY OF PLAY—6.09
DRAMA—7.78
STAR POWER—7.66
CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—7.35
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—7.26
LOCAL IMPACT—6.46
TOTAL: 42.60
“THOSE BONNY LADS”
The late Bob Lanier was among the greatest centers in basketball history. A three-time All-American at Saint Bonaventure, an NBA Hall of Famer, and reported possessor of a size-22 foot, Lanier also had a Jordanesque origin story—cut from his Buffalo-area high school team, he stuck with it and wound up a prep star, recruited by virtually every school in the nation. He went to Bonaventure, in tiny Olean, N.Y., because coach Larry Weise told him his parents could watch him play every home game.
Lanier’s sophomore year (freshmen couldn’t play varsity ball then) was 1967-68, a breakout season for player and school. Lanier’s best friend and roommate at SBU was another sophomore, point guard Billy Kalbaugh. “The reason I roomed with him is I figured a guy 5’11” needed a friend 6’11”” he reasoned. Kalbaugh was the son of the head coach at RPI and was the classic “coach on the floor,” and his pinpoint entry passes and ball handling made Lanier’s life easier.
The St. Bonaventure Brown Indians (“Bonnies” was SBU’s unofficial nickname until it replaced the un-PC one in 1992) featured the “The Iron Five”—the starters played virtually the whole game. Along with Lanier and Kalbaugh were Billy Butler, John Hayes, and Jim Satalin. The bench offered nothing that year—incredibly, just 55 points scored all season! Naturally, Weise employed a heavy zone defense scheme to protect his Iron Five from getting into foul trouble.
The ’68 squad overcame a trial by fire in an early-season holiday tournament in Florida, during which players from Auburn used racial epithets against the black players, including Lanier. But SBU overcame the difficult circumstances to win, and never stopped winning. The Reilly Center in Olean became the center of eastern hoops as Lanier led the team into the upper echelon of the rankings. They won tough road games at Villanova and Canisius, and bombarded Calvin Murphy and Niagara by 29 points. By mid-February only two collegiate teams remained undefeated—the Houston Cougars, led by Elvin Hayes, and Saint Bonaventure and Lanier.
Having reached number four in the nation, SBU came to New Jersey on Valentine’s Day, Wednesday, February 14, 1968, to put their unbeaten mark on the line against a determined group of Seton Hall Pirates in the Walsh Gym snakepit. “I cannot recall a game at Walsh as packed as much as that night,” said longtime season ticket holder Tom Kirschenbaum. “The old gym was literally rocking and you could feel it. It was standing room only with people standing all around the balcony and sitting on the stairs if lucky enough to find a spot to sit.” Seton Hall was just 7-11 on the season, but played above themselves all evening.
The Iron Five weren’t phased by the raucous atmosphere, however. Lanier and Bill Butler hit every one of their first eleven shots (Lanier was 7-7) as the Bonnies pulled out to a 34-26 lead. But the Pirates were pressing like madmen, and kept driving into the zone, and working hard on the boards, and the fouls mounted on the Iron Five. Satalin fouled out, and then, with the score 59-55 SBU with 3:09 remaining, so did Lanier.
The seldom-used Bonnies subs called themselves “F Troop” after the sitcom zanies, but now they were actually needed. Well, not so much, for Kalbaugh was still out there. He scored SBU’s final eight points down the stretch to keep their nose in front, but Seton Hall, buoyed by the crazed crowd, scored five straight off turnovers to tie the game at 63 with 90 seconds left. Gene Fahey, who replaced Lanier, twice missed front ends of one-and-one opportunities at the line, and Kalbaugh saw his driving, twisting attempt with seconds to go rim out. The Walsh mob got a chance for bonus basketball as the game went into overtime.
The Hall kept up the press in the overtime session, but now the Bonnies had its measure. Another sensational moment for Kalbaugh was the defining play. He drove to the basket but lost his footing and went down on his keister. Somehow he maintained his dribble, and while prone managed to dish it to Hayes, who scored while getting fouled. Hofstra coach Paul Lynner, a spectator on the evening, gasped “That’s one of the best plays I ever saw!” That put SBU up six, and they couldn’t miss in overtime, winning by the deceptive score of 81-71. They were now 18-0, having survived the toughest test of the season thus far.
Afterwards, Depaul coach Ray Meyer raved about the Bonnies. “They could go all the way to the NCAA semifinals” he told Sports Illustrated. “Lanier is obviously a super-player, but Butler roams around inside, looking for shots, and he may be even more dangerous. The whole team is so unselfish. If you go tight underneath, they just throw it out to the guards, and they kill you.”
AFTERMATH
The Bonnies made it to the 1968 NCAA tournament undefeated, at 22-0, and took care of Boston College in their first game for win #23. But they fell at last, to North Carolina, in the regional semis. “We played a zone against them,” recalled Weise, “but they beat us handily because they threw the ball over the top of us. Once you get to that level — the lesson I learned right then and there — you can’t play zone.” They also lost the consolation game against Columbia to finish 23-2.
After the season, Lanier was asked to play on the Olympic team headed for Mexico City, but he boycotted, along with Lew Alcindor, Elvin Hayes, and other African-American stars, in protest over the lack of progress in civil rights. In 1969, in the rematch against the Hall at the Reilly Center, Lanier scored a program-record 51 points in a Bonnies blowout. SBU was a top ten team, but they weren’t allowed to play in the NCAA tournament, due to a minor violation—the school had paid for a recruit to travel to watch the team play in the ’68 tournament. The 1970 team was the team that still echoes in the hearts and minds of Bonnie alums and fans. They made a sensational, Cinderella run to the Final Four. But in the regional final against Villanova, Lanier severely injured his knee, and was lost for the tournament. Undermanned against Jacksonville and their big man, Artis Gilmore, the Bonnies lost 91-83. They haven’t come close to that success since.
Lanier went on to a Hall of Fame NBA career, mainly with Detroit, but never sniffed a title in the pros either. His is an under-appreciated career, mainly due to the lack of postseason achievement.
WHAT THEY SAID
“They don’t need me. They can do it on their own.”
—St. Bonaventure center Bob Lanier (they couldn’t)
FURTHER READING:
Fifty Years Later, Untold Stories of Saint Bonaventure’s Unforgettable Run to the Final Four by Tim Graham, The Athletic
VIDEO: