New ECAC Playoff Format

[RichS]

What's the knock on Billy Cleary?

[GoBigRed \'03]

I thought Matt Foley, motivational speaker, and the quotes guy were different...maybe not.

[ugarte]

You are right.  The quote guy was Bennet Brauer.

[Beeeej]

Among other things, the very last games of Cleary's coaching career (before he stepped up to be Harvard's AD) were a QF series at Cornell in 1990.  It's traditional not to shake hands after the first game of a two or three-game series, but after Cornell swept Harvard 2 games to 0, he marched his team off the ice without a handshake at the end of the series.  He was very clearly upset to have been "robbed" of the remainder of his playoff run, especially less than a year after winning the national championship.

Just not very classy.

Beeeej

[CUlater \'89]

I don't remember that, and instead just recall the Big Red icers and some fans who climbed over the boards/glass celebrating on the ice, but perhaps after almost 12 years my memory is faulty.

But I submit that the Faithful's dislike of Cleary is mostly tied to his long and prideful association with, and promotion of, the hated Harvard hockey program.  Much of it is a knee-jerk reaction due to the "rivalry", but in his later years Cleary made a good number of holier-than-thou remarks about the Cornell team and the fans (and he was a notoriously poor winner whenever Havard beat Cornell on the ice).

N.B.  In the '85-'86 season, during an 11-3 loss to Harvard at Lynah, tri-captain Mike Schafer put a puck out of play, and it "just happened" to whiz right at Cleary on the bench.  So perhaps the team felt similarly about the esteemed Harvard skipper.

[zg88]

Jeez... did ya hafta mention the score?!  :-(

[Neil Shapiro \'83]

Cleary was widely despised because:

1. He was always...for many of us...the personification of the "We are better than you because we are Hahvahd" (sucks)  attitude.

2. His constant bellyaching to the refs during fish and chicken incidents at Lynah.

3.  His frequent sore loser act

4. Stories that he denied permission for the Cornell Sports Network to televise Cornell/Hahvahd(sucks) games from Lynah East because he didnt want Hahvahd(sucks) alums seeing the game courtesy of Cornell (better that they cant see the game)

One of my favorite cheers was at the 1985 ECAC championships in the Boston Garden, after beating Clarkson in the Consolation game, a mostly Cornell/Clarkson crowd was watching the beginning of the RPI/Hahvahd(sucks) Final, and the crowd started to cheer "Fat" (pointing at RPI coach Mike Adessa (sp?), "Bald" (pointing at Cleary) "Fat...Bald...Fat...Bald"

[Greg Berge]

That was a great cheer!

In Cleary's defense, he was probably the most outspoken and influential supporter of ECAC hockey that the league has ever seen.

He is the embodiment of the Bostoncentric school of hockey (the Beanpot is the be all and end all, give me Arlington Catholic over the Golden horseshoe anyday, the Boston Globe as the New York Times of college hockey, and all that xenophobic idiocy that seems to be bred in the bones of Bostonians), but it was also nice to have a guy with very sharp elbows fighting the ECAC (and Ivy) fight against the lunkheads from Michigan and Minnesota.

We don't have anybody with national stature supporting the league anymore (Tim Taylor is well into the early stages of senility, and though Joe Marsh is a fine human being nobody west of Appleton gives a damn what he has to say), and it shows.

[CUlater \'89]

Greg is 100% correct about Cleary.  But didn't Marsh do a good job for the league back when he was on the NCAA selection commitee?