A lot has been said about the games already. But a big part of the
final four is the opportunity to meet and hang out with people from
all over the country who share an interest or involvement in college
hockey. This message will hopefully give some people who weren't
there, an idea of what it was like. Some have posted about the HOCKEY-L
gatherings so I won't repeat that, except to thank Carol for her planning
and everyone else for making it fun. The rest of this will consist of
things that haven't been posted yet.
If this bores some of you, sorry in advance. There's sort of a point
behind my posting this, which will become clearer near the end. I
purposely did not include anything that would make anyone look bad.
I've also separated it into two parts.
PART I: JON WHO?
Jon Barkan is a guy I know from my days at Northeastern. He graduated
in the late 80s and went on to spend some time writing for College
Hockey Magazine among other journalistic pursuits, before going into
private business in New York City. He is one of those people that somehow,
everybody knows, probably because of his final four bashes. The entire
first floor of the Radisson St Paul was turned into a huge party this
weekend, with the Barkan gig occupying one half (including the pool) and
the BU folks the other half. Jon's party ran for three days, usually until
after the sun rose the next morning. I believe he said he had a total
of 78 cases of beer wheeled into the hotel, and most of the ice machines
in the hotel were emptied into the bathtubs of the various rooms around
the pool to serve as fridges.
Jon, who was usually decked out in a Gophers or MTU Huskies jersey with his
name on the back, gave me a business card the first night that read:
"You Were Born For This Moment..." - Herb Brooks
THE 6TH ANNUAL
BARKAN BASH
RADISSON ST PAUL POOLSIDE
"...Yep, And You Could Die At This One!" - Jon Barkan
That night (Thursday), Jon said he was going to root for LSSU Saturday,
because then Northeastern would be the real national champion. He said
he was at the West Regional the week before, and when I started to ask
about the controversial goal, he said, "Let me tell you something...the
puck was in the <expletive> net!" Then I had to be reminded about
Merrimack's comeback against Northeastern in 1988 (when we were both in the
NU press box as Merrimack scored 7 unanswered goals to erase a 5 goal
deficit in the final 26 minutes of the NC$$ first round) and how this was
only the second time he had cried after a hockey game.
(Friday night at the Vulcans game, someone signed Jon up for the shootout
in between periods and his name was drawn. After the first guy shot the
puck right in, Jon missed on all three chances, the third going off the
board inches from the hole. As he walked away, Tony [ex-Ogre] yelled in
a voice that echoed throughout Mariucci, "IT WAS IN THE NET!" Jon almost
collapsed laughing. BTW, Jon made the Boston Globe, I am told, for
having taken part in the shootout.)
Saturday night/Sunday morning, we ran into him again...carrying the
trophy. I don't know how he got it, but he was carrying it around as if
it were his newborn son or daughter. Maybe it was some small consolation
from Jeff Jackson, I don't know.
Rumor is that around 3 am Sunday morning, the NC$$ championship trophy
went for a swim in the pool of the Radisson. That's not meant to imply
that Jon had anything to do with it.
Sunday as we prepared to board our plane, guess who came walking by
through the airport, clutching his stick from the shootout and looking
like he had not slept for a week. He left Heather and I with his
business card, the words "Next year...Providence...the Westin Hotel!"
and vanished into thin air, not to be seen again by us mortals until
March 30, 1995.
Part Two to follow.
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Mike Machnik [log in to unmask]
Cabletron Systems, Inc. *HMM* 11/13/93
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