Former Merrimack star Dan Gravelle ('93), the ECHL Rookie of the Year
in 93-94, has signed with the new Detroit Vipers of the IHL.  Gravelle
had 105 points for Greensboro last season.
 
Gravelle joins former Merrimack defenseman Bobby Jay, who also signed
with the Vipers earlier.  Jay played for Merrimack in the mid-80s and
captained the 1987-88 NC$$ quarterfinalist team that went 34-6-0.  He
was named to the IHL All-Star Game a year or two ago when he played
for Fort Wayne.
 
In other news, yesterday's transactions column shows that Yale named
C.J. Marottolo assistant coach.  C.J. played mostly for the
Northeastern JV team around 1986-88 and saw some time with the
varsity, too.  Nice to see he is still around.
 
If you haven't canceled your NESN subscription for the summer, it
looks like they are showing the HE championship games in order every
Friday night around 9:30 or so.  Tonight's installment was a game I
remember fondly, the 1988 championship won by Northeastern over Maine,
4-3.  It was great to see again players like Maine's Dave & Jack
Capuano, Mike McHugh, Mike Golden, Mario Thyer, Bob Beers, and Scott
King, as well as Northeastern's Dave O'Brien, Bruce Racine, Rico
Rossi, Dave Buda, Harry Mews, Brian Dowd, Rob Cowie, and Brian Sullivan.
 
And if you watched closely, you could see me getting in the way of the
cameraman as the clock ticked away the final seconds. :-)
 
Every big game has a story, and the story of this one was NU junior D
Marty Raus.  Raus, a seventh defenseman much of the year, was pressed
into service when All-HE D Claude Lodin came down with the flu hours
before the game.  He ended up scoring the championship-winning goal in
the final minutes.  Adding to the story is the fact that Raus, who I'm
not even sure was supposed to have been on the ice, played the perfect
part of an orange cone in his own end as a Maine player walked around
him and fed Todd Studnicka for a shot that Racine barely turned away
with his waffle.  NU came up ice and Raus scored to go from goat to
hero in a matter of seconds.  It could have easily gone the other way.
 
The series that year between NU and Maine was that close.  Maine
stormed through most of the rest of its schedule, going 33-6-0 against
other teams.  But prior to this game, NU and Maine had split the
season set 1-1-2, each team scoring 15 goals, each team winning and
tying in the other's rink, and each team going 5 for 14 on the power
play entering the rubber match.
 
This was the first time I had really listened to the commentary, and
it struck me how Bob Norton's crystal ball was shining brightly that
day.  The game was played on a Monday night, and the NC$$ pairings had
already been set.  Norton and McDonough (Sean!) ran through the
pairings and when they got to Northeastern, Norton boldly predicted
that Northeastern's draw of Merrimack would prove to be more than the
Huskies could handle.  It was just five nights later that Merrimack
scored seven unanswered goals :-( to dash the Huskies' hopes of a
showdown with LSSU and a possible first ever NC$$ title.  You cannot
imagine the amount of abuse I still take six years later from
Merrimack people over the outcome of that series.
 
Next Friday night, NESN has the 1989 HE championship, as Maine won its
first ever HE crown, 5-4 at host BC.  This was another great game, and
I encourage you to tune in if you can.
 
---                                                                   ---
Mike Machnik                                            [log in to unmask]
Cabletron Systems, Inc.                                    *HMM* 11/13/93
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