Cornell 4 Harvard 3 FINAL

[Beeeej]

[q]yet it galled him to no end that his coaching career ended with a loss to Cornell at Lynah in ECAC quarterfinals.[/q]

...the year after he'd won the national championship, no less.

I respected him a great deal as a coach, right up until those last quarterfinals.  After Cornell won the second game, he skated his team off the ice, refusing to let them shake hands with Cornell's team.  He may have power and hockey wisdom, but that showed a horrible lack of class.  The day after Greg becomes ruler of the universe and appoints Cleary ECAC commish, I hope Cornell moves to Hockey East.

Beeeej

[JohnnieAg99]

A little late, but I gotta disagree with the end of this thread.  Cleary is one of the classiest guys in hockey and in amateur sports, and not because my uncle played against him at Belmont Hill and thought that he was an amazing guy off the ice too.  He's in the US and International Hockey Hall of Fames for a reason, and not just because he led the US to silver and gold medals.  I don't know about the RPI game in '85, but the Sports Illustrated articles on him always talked about what a great sense of humor he had, including patting his head for the 'bald coach' chants.  

CULater'89, I don't know what experiences you've had with him (certainly sounds like no personal ones), or how you are able to tell what galled him to no end...  My Harvard friends *still* talk about how pissed off they are that Shafer took a slapshot at him standing on the bench during a blowout, but I don't know if that had anything to do with him walking off in 1990 - coaches do that pretty often, and we rarely find out why.  Either way, it makes us look kind of small if we can't respect one of college hockey's greats, especially if your arguments are that he "scowled" and that "he believed his teams were vastly superior to ours (and they were...".  

Not any more!  4-3!  LGR!!

[CUlater]

FWIW, my experiences with him were face-to-face, over the phone and second-hand from reporters covering college hockey and players and coaches who played and coached for and against him.  It was the conversations I've had with him and the information I got from others that led me to make my statements above.  BTW, none of the examples you cite as to why he is a classy guy seem to be from personal experience, just things you read about in Sports Illustrated or a USA Hockey Hall of Fame press release.

I don't think anybody here is disrepecting him for his abilities as a hockey player or as a coach/recruiter.  But personally and in his dealings with others, he could be rude, humorless, defensive, vindictive and, dare I say, a bit snobbish, sometimes with cause but sometime without.