Will McDonough, that most respected expert on the sport of U.S. college
hockey, had the following appear in his Boston Globe column today:
 
"This will tell you what Maine hockey coach Shawn Walsh is like, and
how the school is operating these days.  Walsh was told by the
Northern Michigan coach that if he played Jeff Tory, a Prop. 48
student, this year, he (the Northern Michigan coach) would blow the
whistle on Walsh.  Tory played.  The whistle blew.  Tory was ruled
ineligible for the year.  Walsh is still coaching..."
 
My thoughts:
 
* Will, it is so kind of you to grace our sport with your presence and
clearly enlightened commentary.  Now go away.  Your son has it all
over you in terms of college hockey knowledge; leave the brilliant
insights to him, please.  By the way, I think your entry in the
Jump-On-The-Bash-Maine-Bandwagon Sweepstakes arrived too late for our
judges to consider.  But stick around, you can still get your
Fire-Butch-Hobson entry in by Opening Day if you hurry.
 
* How many people would like to bet on whether Will knows the actual
name of "the Northern Michigan coach"?  No, it is not Hayden Fox.  Or
Bill Parcells.
 
* I'm not defending Walsh, who accepted responsibility for the affair,
but does anyone with a brain think that Walsh (or any other coach) should
have benched Tory just because Rick Comley told him to?  No mention is
made here of Walsh's reasons for believing Tory eligible, which any reader
at least deserves to hear.  Instead, Will gives us a blatantly one-sided
and incomplete account of the story - one that broke 3 to 4 months ago,
btw.  But since Will just found out, it must be a breaking story.  Any
non-college hockey fan reading this is undoubtedly going to rank Walsh
up there with the cheating basketball and football programs of this
country, and that seems ridiculously unfair.  I am starting to wonder
if the complaints about the Boston media having it in for Maine are true.
 
* Myself, I don't mean to drag this out again, but heck, it annoys
me to see and hear well-known media people yapping about things they
don't know anything about.  Hope you will all forgive me.
---                                                                 ---
Mike Machnik                                          [log in to unmask]
Cabletron Systems, Inc.                                  *HMM* 11/13/93