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Page A3 The Joan De Arc Crusader / Monday, April 14, 2008 Front Page A1 / Editorials A2 / Crossword A4
1971 Montreal Cup win still sweet By J. Bueker One of my best friends growing up on Joan De Arc was a young rapscallion by the name of Glen Eide. Glen and his parents lived on Willow Avenue directly behind our house at 3219, so our properties were separated only by the slender wooden fence my father had erected around our backyard in 1965. Glen and I were exactly the same age (probably still are), and so there is a virtually endless number of Glen Eide stories that I could relate in this space. However, this being springtime and hockey playoff season, I am reminded of a particularly memorable chapter from the story of our youth. Among other things, Glen was notable for his childhood nicknames. His original sobriquet at Sahuaro School was “Little Glennie Eide,” a sincere term of endearment for a young man who had repeatedly proven himself a gifted wide receiver on our various school flag football teams. While slightly diminutive, he was quick, slippery, and had great hands. Ultimately dissatisfied with this handle though, Glen sought to modify his image by rather grandiosely designating himself as “The Mighty Eidy.” A few years later, in high school, he even promoted himself to “The Almighty Mighty Eidy.” A bit redundant, and perhaps a skosh sacrilegious, but hey, undeniably catchy. Glen and I shared an intense interest in all the major sports, and a friendly rivalry of sorts soon emerged between us as we lined up behind our favorite teams. This little sports team rivalry would come to characterize our friendship on a fundamental level. We shared a particular fondness for the game of hockey, which we often played on our respective driveways with makeshift goals and tennis ball pucks. For Christmas 1969, I received a Sears hockey set that included two hockey sticks and a metal frame goal with net that we soon made very good use of. I was a pretty good player, but Glen soon perfected a very lethal slapshot that became universally feared on the local concrete rinks. It’s still hard to believe that a fuzzy little tennis ball could inflict such pain upon impact with human flesh. The Zambonis first began appearing in the Arizona desert in the 1960s. Phoenix was awarded a franchise in the old Western Hockey League in 1966, and young hockey fans growing up locally in the ‘60s and ‘70s had the Roadrunners for whom to cheer, a team that is still remembered very fondly by those of us who filled Veterans Memorial Coliseum with the sound of air horns and deafening cheers for twelve memorable years. I attended a handful of Roadrunner games with my family, but the vast majority I enjoyed as a guest of Glen and his parents Don and Mela, who were season ticket holders.
Glen Eide’s enthusiasm for sports was matched by a splendidly winsome sense of humor. He began producing a remarkable sports newsletter he called “The Mighty Eidy Review,” which he posted weekly on our common backyard fence using a clothespin. The “Review” provided succinct analysis and detailed predictions of the major sporting events of the day, from the grade school level up through the major leagues. It was also pretty hilarious. Glen peppered each issue with priceless non sequiturs like “If the Lions don’t win this game, they never will,” and “The only reason I picked GCC to win this week is because they’re not playing.” Our entire family enjoyed reading Glen’s work, even my sisters who had little or no interest in athletics. My mother wisely saved several copies of the “Review” for posterity that still remain in my possession. In the spring of 1971, Glen and I were 7th graders at Sahuaro School, and our emerging sports team rivalry was reaching a plateau. We of course cheered as one when we attended the Roadrunner games, but when it came to big league hockey (the NHL), we had strictly discrete loyalties. The Eide lad had become a big fan of the Chicago Blackhawks, who were having one of their finest all-time seasons on the ice that year. The Chicago roster was stocked with some of the most legendary names in the history of the game: Bobby Hull, Stan Mikita, Keith Magnuson and Tony Esposito, to name but a few. The Hawks dominated the West Division, cruising to a sterling 46-17-15 record. Heading into the playoffs, they were clearly a very formidable club. More than a few experts picked them to take the coveted Stanley Cup. Meanwhile, while generally a Detroit sports fan, I had fallen under the spell of the Montreal Canadiens, due no doubt to their legendary success in winning Stanley Cups in the ‘50s and ‘60s. The Habs (short for Les Habitants) won no fewer than ten Cups during those two decades, including five in a row from 1956 to 1960. To this day, no other team in hockey history has come close to this level of achievement. Simply put, the Montreal Canadiens had become synonymous over the years with a tradition in hockey excellence. I liked that. Plus, their uniforms were really cool. By 1971 however, the Montreal team had fallen to mere respectability, finishing third in the East Division. They were universally expected to make an early exit from the playoffs, since their first round opponent would be the mighty Boston Bruins, the defending Cup champs and owners of the league’s best record at 57-14-7. The Habs proceeded to shock the sports world by dispatching the Bruins in seven hard-fought games, thanks in large measure to the consistently extraordinary performances of a rookie goaltender by the name of Ken Dryden. That series is still regarded as one of the greatest upsets in hockey history. It suddenly dawned on me that my adopted hockey team might actually be good enough to win it all. However, the Canadiens would still have to defeat Glen’s Blackhawks in the Cup finals, and Chicago was deemed the clear favorite in spite of Montreal’s impressive dispatch of Bobby Orr and the Bruins. The Hawks were hitting on all cylinders, and would have the home ice advantage in the series. The stage was thereby set for a monumental Bueker-Eide sports team showdown. Glen was confident; I was cautiously optimistic. To be brief, the series proved more exciting and interesting than even the staunchest of hockey fans had imagined. Each of the first six games was won by the home team, boiling the series down to a seventh and deciding game at Chicago Stadium on Tuesday night, May 18, 1971. As odd as it might seem today, with our universal cable coverage of every imaginable sporting event, CBS was not even planning to televise Game 7, since it was not being played on a weekend. Due to the quality of the series and the undeniably intense fan interest however, network executives reversed their policy and issued the dramatic announcement that they would after all be treating America to the seventh game in prime time on Tuesday night. Needless to say, The Mighty Eidy and I were stoked. I holed up in the master bedroom of our house for the duration of the big game, where the superior family television was located, and was able to watch without interruption. My father was out of town that evening, and the other family members were otherwise occupied. Much to my chagrin, Chicago continued its home ice success in the series by jumping out to a solid 2-0 lead behind goals by Dennis Hull and Danny O’Shea. Glen, being very much of the opponent-mocking school of thought, delighted in the ritual of calling our house, letting the phone ring once, and then hanging up whenever his team scored during a sporting event. Thus was I forced to silently endure two single rings as Chicago took their two-goal lead in the deciding game. I was beginning to reconcile myself to what seemed inevitable defeat when an extraordinary thing occurred. With only minutes remaining in the second period, Montreal forward Jacques Lemaire launched what appeared to be a routine shot all the way from center ice in the general direction of Chicago goalie Tony Esposito, who had so far played a flawless Game 7. Incredibly, the legendary Chicago goalkeeper somehow misplayed the puck, and it found its way into the back of the net. Suddenly, it was 2-1. Game on. Then, with but a minute left in the second stanza, Montreal’s intrepid “Pocket Rocket,” Henri Richard, scored with a whistling slapshot from in front of the Chicago goal. The big game was all tied up. The Chicago crowd had fallen silent. The momentum had shifted. The Mighty Eidy was now doubtlessly excreting bricks. Dare I hope for an actual victory? The final period of this exceptional game and series was naturally very tense and exciting, and it didn’t take long for something to happen. 2:34 into the period, Richard struck again and delivered the coup de grâce, a breakaway wrist shot over a sprawling Esposito. 3-2, Habs. Meanwhile, Ken Dryden continued his amazing playoff performance to the end, fending off the final, frantic Chicago onslaught and preserving the stunning Montreal victory. It seemed an eternity, but the final seconds finally ticked off the old Chicago Stadium scoreboard clock, and the Canadiens flooded onto the ice to mob their MVP goaltender. I leapt up from my parents’ bed with pure triumphant exultation, bordering on disbelief. Then I looked over at the phone lying on the night stand next to bed.
With trembling hands, I carefully dialed the number to the Eide residence and allowed a single ring to resonate throughout the Eide household. I then carefully replaced the telephone receiver. Sweet. Sweet. I of course was thoroughly elated at the outcome of this phenomenally great game and series, and naturally felt the need to share my excitement with others. I wandered out to our garage and there found my brother Charles and his pal Mike Krupinski engrossed in a game of billiards. My animated account of the game, its outcome, and overall historical significance was met with utter indifference. The response amounted to “Who cares? Get a life.” I was simply astounded by this blithe dismissal of such a monumental event in the history of sport. Being high schoolers and all, they were apparently just way too cool and detached to attend to such matters. The damn fools. I went back in the house and watched Carol Burnett. I refrained from excessive gloating when I encountered Glen on the Sahuaro playground the following morning, since being casual and nonchalant about such things was considered the cool thing to do (and thus all the more devastating). I was certainly all smiles, though. To his credit, Glen graciously conceded the Canadiens’ superiority and marveled at their improbable run to the Cup title. 1970-71 was a golden year for me in the Bueker-Eide sports team rivalry. My Detroit Lions had swept his Green Bay Packers during the NFL season, shutting them out twice, 40-0 and 20-0. And now my Montreal Canadiens had humbled his mighty Chicago Blackhawks for the Stanley Cup. With both of my teams on the rise, I looked forward to years of continuing dominance in our ongoing competition. I almost felt sorry for poor Glen. The Mighty Eidy indeed. How pitiful. However, things did not work out quite the way I anticipated. Montreal was eliminated in the first round of the playoffs the following year, and within two seasons Glen’s Packers were dominating my Lions in a thoroughly humiliating fashion (a circumstance that persists to this day, it should be observed). The Canadiens won a smattering of Stanley Cups in the years following that timeless series in 1971, but have never again dominated the league as they once did. Glen was presented with numerous opportunities to mock me with his sports teams’ successes during our high school years, and he was in no way reluctant to do so. Serves me right, I reckon. I lost touch with Glen after high school, but we were finally reunited in May 2006 at a party celebrating our 30 year high school reunion, precisely 35 years after that unforgettable Montreal-Chicago series. We reminisced and chuckled about our old sports team rivalry, and looked over some of those surviving copies of his legendary “Mighty Eidy Review.” They’re still pretty damn hilarious. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________JDA
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