Aspiring

Promise and Devotion - The State Championship Game

“Boys,” Coach Blackburn said. Tyler Marchand and his teammates and friends were gathered around him at center ice, having just finished practice the day before the 1981 Massachusetts state hockey championship was to begin on the home rink in Boston College. Coach held his stick high over his head, pointing at the four blue-and-gold banners hanging in the rafters. Behind the one that said, “Regional Finalist, 1977,” they saw a man crouched on a narrow catwalk.

“You’ve heard me say it a million times,” Coach said. “Losing is good for winning. You know I believe that. Losing has made us strong. It has helped us see our weaknesses so we could eliminate them. It has made us keenly aware that at any moment the thing we desire most can be snatched away.” He paused. “Now boys, we are done with losing. We have learned its lessons. Now it is time to win.”

After four years of lobbying, Coach had persuaded Massachusetts’ amateur hockey officials to hold the state tournament in Boston College. Players, coaches, families, and fans from across the state jammed the town’s only hotel and all the motels along Route 816. A line spilled out the door of Audrey’s, by seven each morning. Visitors clamored for the glossy tournament program, the souvenir pucks embossed with the Eagles’ logo, the kielbasa and bratwurst sizzling on grills in the rink parking lot.

All week, people from Maine and all over New England sought out Coach to tell him what a great tournament and a beautiful place this was.

But for all the good cheer and money flowing down Main Street, the tournament would not be a success unless the Eagles won it in front of their own fans, in their own rink, with all of Massachusetts hockey establishment watching. Coach knew that. That was the plan. And he thought – everyone at BC thought – that they had a good chance to win. They’d lost just six of the fifty-seven games they’d played that year. Three Eagles – Patrick Cleary, Zack Greene, and Tyler Marchand, the kid who’d been given the opportunity to make something of his career with BC – had been named to state All-Star teams. And they’d come so close the year before, only to lose to the Pipefitters in the semifinals. All the while, led by the offensive prowess of Tyler’s first line.

“Remember what we said all those years ago?” Coach said to them. “We said we came together to achieve the ultimate goal. And what was that?”

“To win one game, Coach,” they all answered in unison.

“Not all the games. One game. Now we’re going to play that game.” He lowered his stick. “We’re going to play it tomorrow in the quarterfinals. We’re going to play it again Friday in the semis. And on Saturday afternoon, we are going to win that one game, the state championship. Do I have that right, boys?”

“Yes, sir,” they yelled.

He gazed up into the rafters. “Fiyero,” he called out. “Now.”

They all looked up and watched as Fiyero, the captain, scuttled from banner to banner, undoing their fastenings. One by one they fluttered down to the ice. Coach gathered them up and carried them away.

Naturally he had a plan for defeating each of their opponents. In the quarterfinals, they came out hitting against quick but small Fife Electric of Concord and wore them down, scoring twice late to win, 3-1. Patrick scored the winner. Against Copperstone Sporting Goods, they frustrated their two high-scoring centers, by giving them the outside lanes while jamming up the front of their own net. Tyler scored two goals in their 4-1 win.

As they did in all of their games, they used the Eagle Swoop to clog the middle of the ice and make it hard for teams to break out of their own zone cleanly. The opponents and their fans loathed the Eagle Swoop, just as the parents and fans once had. Now, of course, the parents and fans loved the Eagle Swoop because it helped them to win. As Coach was so fond of saying, “They don’t care how, just how many.”