Fifty years ago today, defending national champion BU headed to Cornell for its first meeting with the Big Red since the previous season’s NCAA championship game, a 4-0 Terrier win. On Dec. 13, 1972, BU would register its first-ever win at Lynah Rink, a 9-0 rout that featured a hat trick by star sophomore Dick Decloe.
A few weeks later, BU learned that Cornell had made a complaint to the ECAC alleging that Decloe was ineligible. As it turned out, his Canadian junior team had paid a $189.33 provincial school tax—unbeknownst to the player and his family—and that payment deep-six’ed Decloe’s eligibility. BU was forced to forfeit 11 games and saw its record go from 11-2-0 to 0-13-0. Decloe left school and joined the Toronto Marlboros, helping them win the Memorial Cup. He went on to star for many years in Germany’s DEL (153 points one season). In 1980, he skated for the Netherlands in the Lake Placid Olympics.
In 2009, just after BU’s “DC Miracle” title, Dave Warner, a senior defenseman on that 1972-73 team—and a member of the two NCAA championship squads that preceded it—authored his remembrance of that game in Ithaca and the ensuing events: The Game That Never Was. It’s linked in the Terrier Tales sidebar and here.
Interesting tidbit on Decloe and the 1980 Olympics and the not so miraculous results for Canada - Canada's own medal hopes were destroyed mainly because of two unexpected, flukey events. In their third game they lost to Finland 4-3 on what can only be described as a "Tommy Salo/Dan Cloutier-like" 100 foot dump in on goalie Bob Dupuis. Even with this unexpected defeat, the Canadians had a good shot of continuing to the medal round if Poland did the expected and defeat Holland. The Dutch had lost to Canada 10-1 and the Soviets 17-4 while Poland had fared somewhat better losing 5-1 and 8-1 to the same two squads and had actually beaten Finland 5-4 in the opening game of the tourney. Alas the freaky, deaky Dutch bested the Poles 5-3, knocking Canada out of the second spot. Canada would have played Sweden and the U.S. in the next round, two teams they had fared well against in the past.
ReplyDeleteAs an aside, the Dutch team was led by Mississauga, Ontario born Dick Decloe who scored at a point per game clip in both the OHL and Boston University during the early 1970's. Decloe tallied five points over five Olympic matches. Their goaltender Ted Lassen hailed from Oakville, Ontario and played junior with the London Knights and was also a member of the Ned Dowd-era (just prior to Slap Shot) Johnstown Jets.