1983 Harvard game question

I found this great site when getting ready to attend last weekend's Yale game, which was the first game that I have attended in many years, and tremendously entertaining.

Can someone please help me with the following question:

I remember two notable things about the fall 1983 home game against Harvard. I clearly remember that Harvard scored four very quick and unanswered goals in the first period, yet Cornell ended up winning 6-5. I am less sure that I correctly remember that when the Cornell lineup was introduced, Mike Schafer skated to center ice and broke a hockey stick over his bare head. Am I remembering this correctly?

Thanks for any help that anyone can provide.

While I was not yet 1 at the time and thus not there, I do know he broke a stick over his head (apparently pre-cracked in some versions) before some game to get the crowd excited.

Well, the thing that makes the game so memorable for me ( it was my junior year) is that assuming my memory is correct, Schafer broke the stick over his head, and the crowd went absolutely insane. Just a few minutes later it was like a funeral in there as Cornell was down 4-zip. Yet Cornell won. It was the most dramatic game I ever saw.

All of that is more or less correct (although for confirmation, you should check Greg Berge's fabulous TBRW Web site for a box score ... I bet it will posted here in minutes). The only bit that's off is the bare head. Schafer did indeed break his stick over his head during pre-game introductions, but he was wearing his helmet.

This was one of the most memorable regular season games of the 1980s. Mark Henderson's goal (the game-winner?) was the highlight. Arguably the fastest Cornell skater of the post-Ned era, Henderson used all that speed to skate onto a puck that had been cleared high out of the Cornell zone -- nearly as high as the lights, as I recall -- and scored on a breakaway.

I hated that Harvard team.


Edit: Deleted the reference to Armstrong -- I see that he wasn't in the Harvard lineup until 1985ish.

[Q]Hillel Hoffmann Wrote:

All of that is more or less correct (although for confirmation, you should check Greg Berge's fabulous TBRW Web site for a box score ... I bet it will posted here in minutes). The only bit that's off is the bare head. Schafer did indeed break his stick over his head during pre-game introductions, but he was wearing his helmet.[/q]

I think it might have been Adam that observed that that story got more fantastic every time it was told for a while. Like the stick was on fire when he broke it or something.

I definitely would have remembered that, but the stick was, alas, not on fire.

[Q]I think it might have been Adam that observed that that story got more fantastic every time it was told for a while. Like the stick was on fire when he broke it or something.[/q]
Amen to that, John. Although some of the more fantastic bits really did happen. Not only did Schafer break his stick over his (helmeted) head, but he skated menacingly toward the assembled Harvard players while doing so, looking at them while snapping his twig at center ice. I'd love to say it gave me goosebumps, but it was sorta embarrassing. I remember thinking: "Wow, he really is an asshole."

[Waiting for lightning to strike me or a crowd to assemble below my window with pitchforks and lanterns.]

Hey, that's Coach Asshole to you!

That was by far the best game of a bad season, and all the comments posted above are correct. Schafer breaks a stick over his head in the intros, we fall behind 4-0 in the first, Henderson scores the winner (6-5) on a breakaway after collecting a pass that seemed to go through the rafters.

I was sitting in the second row of Section B at that game. I caught my first and only puck ever at a College or pro game. Needless to say I still have it. I engraved the score and date on the puck.

The box score: [www.tbrw.info]

The Schafer stick breaking incident was great!!

The most memorable game of that era at Lynah was probably the comeback victory against Providence in the ECAC quarterfinal playoffs in March 1979. I believe Cornell was down 5-1 with about 15 minutes left in the game and then scored 5 consecutive goals by five different players. Lance Nethery tied the score with about 15 seconds left by basically skating end-to-end past all five Providence players. Rob Gemmell won it with a slap shot in OT. However, if my memory is correct John Olds got the crowd back into the game by either getting away with using his stick to take out the outside skate of a Providence player during a face-off or doing a similar stick breaking play early in the third period. Anyone remember more of the details?

The 1979 playoff game has been discussed here at such great length over the years that I'll resist the temptation to relive it again. It is, and likely always will be, the greatest single sporting event I've ever witnessed.

The only thing I'll add is that msphi81's description missed the two most bizarre aspects of the game:

1. Randy Wilson missing an unmolested, close-range shot at an empty net seconds before Nethery's end-to-end, game-tying rush. He wept like a child after the game.

2. Providence brought f-ing cheerleaders to the game. They were very annoying. They wept too.

Yes you are correct on the Wilson miss and the cheerleaders were more than just annoying. However, didn't Olds do something to get the crowd going?

Man, I love the analysis and mind-numbing statistical games we play here on elynah, but this is the real reason I love reading this site. Thanks guys for sharing all of your memories. As a fairly recent member to the Faithful family, please keep it up. Here's to making more this year. LGR

[Q]BCrespi Wrote:

Man, I love the analysis and mind-numbing statistical games we play here on elynah, but this is the real reason I love reading this site. Thanks guys for sharing all of your memories. As a fairly recent member to the Faithful family, please keep it up. Here's to making more this year. LGR[/q]

Here, here! I could read this stuff all day.

[Q]Hillel Hoffmann Wrote:


2. Providence brought f-ing cheerleaders to the game. They were very annoying.
They wept too. [/q]

Resisting the open shot on an empty net here.

A question that has been bothering me for years. What is really meant by statements like "Harvard scored four very quick and unanswered goals"? Unless the game is a shutout, the last of a sequence of consecutive goals by one team is always "answered". Certainly it was in this case because Cornell scored only 12 seconds later.

I stand corrected. "Harvard scored four quick goals in a row."

Thanks to everyone for your answers. Poking around here brings back some great memories that were dredged up by going to the Yale game. I should try to make a point of seeing at least one game each year from now on!

[Q]msphi81 Wrote:However, didn't Olds do something to get the crowd going?[/q]
Oops, it took me a while to realize that you were connecting Olds to Schafer via lumber. Sorry about that. No, I don't remember Olds doing anything like that, but I've heard other folks mention this. Don't know if it's apocryphal.

Olds was the best. He and Schafer are part of a lineage of enforcers in the post-Ned period. It goes something like this: Stokes > Olds > Schafer ... and then a spiritual gap.

[Q]Hillel Hoffmann Wrote:
Olds was the best. He and Schafer are part of a lineage of enforcers in the post-Ned period. It goes something like this: Stokes > Olds > Schafer ... and then a spiritual gap.[/q]
I would include Ratushny and the next in that sequence. It's often forgetten that he was a punishing hitter and great ice captain because his offensive skills were so strong.

The geneology of the "spiritual heart of the team," IMHO, goes:

John Olds 79-82
Mike Schafer 83-86
Dan Ratushny 89-91
Shaun Hannah 91-94
Steve Wilson 94-97
Stephen Bâby 00-03

I'd kinda like to include Greg Hornby on that list somehow. I suppose one could say that this team just has a lot of heart.

[Q]Hillel Hoffmann Wrote:
Olds was the best. He and Schafer are part of a lineage of enforcers in the post-Ned period. It goes something like this: Stokes > Olds > Schafer ... and then a spiritual gap.
[/q]
Oh, I don't know--Norton and Levasseur, though certainly not one-dimensional "enforcers," certainly picked up the slack after Schafer's graduation. I'd give the edge to Norton, since Levasseur, to me, always seemed just undisciplined. Norton's penalties sure brought the ire of some guy who sat in front of my parents and me. "Oh, Norton! Norton!" he would lament.

After that there does seem to be a gap until the arrival of Dan Dufresne in 1993. As the penalty box seat had etched into it at one time: "Reserved, Dan Dufresne." When Cooney, Steve Wilson, and Jason Kendall arrived (my class, heh!), the goon factor certainly increased. I think Wilson was actually most in Schafer's mold. Nobody seemed to be able to get under the skin of opposing players like Wilson. Cooney and he would both throw their bodies around checking people, but Wilson would taunt them for his and Cooney's hits. And then the penalty would be called and his face would change to that boyish, "Oh, geez, ref, it couldn't have been me!" look. Rich(H) and I used to call him: "Steve Wilson, a--hole of the ECAC." Boy were we glad he was ours.

Kendall, however, still holds my heart (and perhaps Schafer's) for most obvious gooning. There was a dustup at the end of a Brown game in Providence, back when Gaudet's travelling goon show always caused problems. (That is, besides their reprehensible practice of falling on the puck at the end of possible ties with us. Boy, I wanted to kill someone when they did that.) Anyway, the usual suspects were involved, including Cooney. Well, Kendall was skating around, uninvolved, out at center ice when things seemed to be calming down. I saw Schafer point at him, point at the fight, and say something like, "You! Go!" Kendall went charging in from center ice and absolutely clobbered someone. The fight started up again and he and Cooney found their way to DQs. It was precious.

I'm not really a fan of fighting, in hockey or otherwise, but there was something about Gaudet's teams that brought out the worst in everyone. If it's Gaudet--Brown or Green--flush it down.

And Bob himself is such a soft-spoken guy...

[Q]Trotsky Wrote:I would include Ratushny and the next in that sequence. It's often forgetten that he was a punishing hitter and great ice captain because his offensive skills were so strong. The geneology of the "spiritual heart of the team," IMHO, goes:

John Olds 79-82
Mike Schafer 83-86
Dan Ratushny 89-91
Shaun Hannah 91-94
Steve Wilson 94-97
Stephen Bâby 00-03
[/q]

I think that's a good lineage for "spiritual heart of team," but the lineage I was describing was (ruthless) "enforcer," an important role that no one really took up for a while. Sometimes the two have been the same, as in Olds and Schafer, but not always. Stokes wasn't the spiritual heart of nuthin', except maybe darkness.

It's interesting to note that even in your lineage, there's still a telling spiritual gap after Schafer.

[Q]Scersk '97 Wrote:

Hillel Hoffmann Wrote:
Olds was the best. He and Schafer are part of a lineage of enforcers in the post-Ned period. It goes something like this: Stokes > Olds > Schafer ... and then a spiritual gap.
[/Q]
Oh, I don't know--Norton and Levasseur, though certainly not one-dimensional "enforcers," certainly picked up the slack after Schafer's graduation.[/q]
Norton and Levasseur were physical and picked up loads of PIMs, so there was a superficial resemblance to the Olds-Schafer enforcer role. But I just can't put them in the same lineage as John and Mike. There are some guys (and you're right, Steve Wilson was one of 'em) who have this freaky understanding of when to use intimidation -- physical, mental, legal, illegal, instigating, retaliatory, whatever -- to change the momentum or pace of a game. That's what a true enforcer does. Olds knew it, without being told. Schafer knew it. Now Stokes, he didn't always understand -- I think Bertrand had to tell him to kick booty.