Northeastern University - Cauldron Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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4-» Don Marcotte, behind Bobby Orr (number 4), scores a goal that ties a game with the Minnesota North Stars. Minnesota goalie Cesare Maniago and teammate Dennis Hextall fall on ice in vain attempt to stop puck. Bruins in the first round, four games to one, and Esposito hurt his knee, requiring off-season sur- gery. Esposito returned in October of the 1973-74 season, not in January as the doctors had predicted, and won his fourth-straight scoring championship. Esposito, Orr and goaltender Gilles Gilbert led the Bruins to an easy playoff win over McKenzie was quickly followed to the WHA by Cheevers, Derek Sand- erson, and Ted Green, leaving the Bruins both weak and disunified. To make the outlook even more dismal, Bobby Orr underwent major knee surgery, which took him months to overcome. Phil Esposito kept rolling, through, as he became a Canadien hero in the Canada-Russia hockey series. As the ' 72-73 season opened, Harry Sinden returned to his old club — giving up a position in pri- vate business to become Boston ' s Managing Director, which resulted in longtime favorite Milt Schmidt being kicked upstairs. The season began badly for the B ' s, who rallied for a short time between Thanksgiving and Christ- mas, but again nosedived into third place. Coach Tom Johnson was unce- remoniously dumped and Armand Bep Guidolin took over the coaching reins. The club, including Derek Sanderson who was less than happy in the WHA and had returned to his old team, climbed back to second place before the playoffs. The playoffs were a Boston dis- aster, as the Bruins tried unsuc- cessfully to ride 44-year-old goalie Jacques Plante to the Cup. The revenge-minded Rangers took the Toronto and followed up with a final round over Chicago. Then the roof fell in. The Bruins won the first game of the final series with the Philadephia Flyers, but lost the next three to put themselves in a hole. Boston won the fifth game, but lost the sixth — and the series — as Bruin reject Bernie Parent was out- standing for the Flyers in goal and center Bobby Clark skated circles around Esposito. Following the series, Guidolin jumped ship, citing job security, and was replaced by Don Cherry, coach of the Rochester team in the American Hockey League. By the middle of the 1974-75 sea- son, the Bruins were fighting to keep up with the Buffalo Sabres in the Adams Division of the Wales Conference in the new-look NHL. Esposito was on his way to an- other scoring record, but the loss the previous year to the Flyer ' s dampened the fans ' enthusiasm, as Bruins attendance for the first time in decades fell behind that of the Celtics, who had won the 12th Na- tional Basketball Association cham- pionship the year before. — Steve Krause Patriots struggle for respectability The Boston Patriots. The Fox- boro Patriots. The New England Patriots. Coach Clive Rush? Coach John Mazur? Interim Coach Phil Ben- gston? Coach and General Man- ager Chuck Fairbanks? Such have things gone for Bos- ton ' s entry in the National Football League over the past five years. But Fairbanks, a new stadium in Foxboro and a couple of guys named Jim Plunkett and Mack Her- ron brought an end in 1974 to all the controversy that has sur- rounded the team. From 1970 to 1973 the team won 16 games and lost 40. The last win- ning season the team had was in 1966 when it compiled an 8-4-2 record in the now defunct Ameri- can Football League. Something had to be done. The team wasn ' t supposed to be that bad. It had acquired Plunkett in 1971 after finishing 2-12 the per- vious year and things were sup- posed to get better. After all, Plun- kett was the most sought after col- lege player that year, and he came to the Patriots with tremendous credentials. During his final year at Stanford, Plunkett reaped all the country ' s major awards for college players. He won the Heisman Trophy, the Maxwell Award, the United Press International Player of the Year, Sporting News Player of the Year, Sport Magazine College Player of the Year, Walter Camp All-Ameri- 17

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when he compiled a 15-6 record for the Red Sox and won the American League ERA title with an impres- sive 1 .91 mark. Fisk batted .293, hit 22 homers, and drove in 61 runs. The following year, 1973, be- longed to Tommy Harper as the speed demon rewrote the Boston base stealing books with a league- leading 54 thefts. He topped Tris Speaker ' s old club mark of 52 set in 1912. The team also set a club record of 83 errorless games, led the league in slugging percentage at .401 , and nad the best won-loss pitcher in Rogelio Moret (13-2), but still finished eight games behind Baltimore with an 89-73 record. Tiant became the first Red Sox 20-game winner since Jim Lonborg in 1967 when the crafty Cuban won 20 and lost 13. Bill Lee backed up Tiant with a 17-11 record. The 17 wins was the most by a Red Sox lefty since Mel Parnell won 21 in 1953. Orlando Cepeda also made a contribution, as the new designate- ed hitter rule came into effect in the 1973 season. Cepeda was the top DH in the league, batting .289, v : w Carl Yastrzemski ' s classic stance helped make him a feared hitter. hitting 20 homers, and driving in 86 runs. After leading the league for two and one-half solid months in 1974, the Red Sox died in September and finished in third place with an 84-78 record. Under new manager Darryl Johnson, brought up from the Paw- tucket farm system to replace Ed- die Kasko, the Red Sox played su- per baseball through May, June, July, and August. Then, suddenly, the hitters stopped hitting, the pitchers stopped pitching, and the fielders stopped fielding. The team collapsed into oblivion, nevermore to be heard from that season. Tiant and Yastrzemski had good years, Tiant compiling a 22-13 record and a 2.92 ERA and Yaz batting .301. But the collapse came, much to the dismay of thou- sands who throng to Fenway Park year after year to see the team. Wait till next year. — Kenneth G. Hughes The Cup came to Boston It was 30 long years between Stanley Cup victories for the Bos- ton Bruins, but led by Bobby Orr, perhaps the game ' s greatest de- fenseman, and Phil Esposito, hock- ey ' s most prolific scorer to come along since Bobby Hull, the dar- lings of the Boston Gard en crowd moved into a new era, winning two National Hockey League Cham- pionships in the past six year. Bruins fans had suffered through a few good and a lot of bad years, the worst being the last 1950 ' s and early 60 ' s, but the past ten years have seen a new Bruins team, a championship contender every year, and a source of unending controversy. The Bruins, coming off their first Stanley Cup victory in 30 years, entered the 1970-71 season with a new coach at the helm. Tom John- son, a former Montreal defense- man, took over from Harry Sinden and led his squad to an easy East- ern Division crown. Sinden left the club in a financial dispute after his team had won the 1970 Cup with eight straight wins over the Chicago Black Hawks and the St. Louis Blues in the final two 16 rounds of the playoffs. Johnson, whose easy-going coaching style seemed to agree with the often unmanageable Bruins, was successful in his first season as coach, largely due to the performance of center Phil Espo- sito, whose 76 goals and 76 assists that season were an NHL record. The haughty Bruins were heavily favored to keep the Cup that year, but the Montreal Canadiens and their brilliant goalie Ken Dryden, who had played little during the regular season, had different ideas. The lanky Dryden kept Esposito, Orr and the rest of the Bruins big guns muttering to themselves as he shut the door on numerous occa- sions, with the Montreal team win- ning the quarterfinal round, 4-3. Esposito scored only 66 goals in 1971-72, but Boston again wal- tzed to the Eastern Division title, losing just 13 games. The first two rounds of the Stanley Club were a cakewalk for the Bruins, as the Toronto Maple Leafs fell to Boston 4-1 and the St. Louis Blues succumbed in four straight. That set the stage for the final round against the New York Rangers, who had battled with the Bruins two years before, losing an emotion-filled quarterfinal series to Boston, 4-2. It was no different this time. Bos- ton ' s Ace Bailey scored the tie- breaking goal to win the first game, and the Bruins followed up with another win to move the series to New York with 2-0 Bruins lead. The Rangers won the third game, but newly-acquired defenseman Carol Vadnais led Boston to its third win of the series, and the ac- tion moved back to Boston Garden. New York postponed the Boston celebration, winning the fifth game, 3-2, but Wayne Cashman scored two goals and goalie Gerry Chee- vers shut the Rangers out to win the sixth game and the series — the Bruins ' s second Stanley Cup in three years. The Stanley Cup Champions fell apart during the off-season, though. Ed Westfall, a long-time Garden favorite, was drafted by the expansion New York Islanders, and scrappy right-winger John McKenzie jumped to the fledgling World Hockey Association.

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Mini Mack Herron, the Patriots ' s 5 ' 5 answer to O.J. Simpson, sprints across the goal line for a touchdown with three Buffalo defenders hot on his trail. can Player of the Year, American College Football Coaches Associ- ation Offensive Player of the Year, and countless other awards. In his rookie season, Plunkett lived up to his expectations as he led the Patriots to a 6-8 record and was named the NFL ' s Rookie of the Year. He threw for 2158 yards, 19 touchdowns and completed 48.2 per cent of his passes. Things were looking up. The Pa- triots were in a new stadium in Fox- boro and Plunkett showed tre- mendous promise for the future. But the following season things went sour. The Patriots slipped to 3-11 in 1972, gave up more points than any of the 26 NFL teams and scored less than all but two other clubs. The team gave up a whop- ping 446 points while scoring just 192 and finished dead last in the Eastern Division of the American Football Conference. There was definitely a missing in- gredient in the formula required to make a winner of the New England Patriots. That ingredient was Fair- banks, the fiery coach of Okla- homa, who the Patriots lured on Jan. 26, 1973 with an offer he couldn ' t refuse. Fairbanks spent the off-season reorganizing the coaching staff and pouring over the waiver wires for football players. Immediately the Patriots showed an improvement, a slight one, but at least an improve- ment. In his first year, Fairbanks recorded a 5-9 record and felt it was a good starting year. The team showed marked improvement on both offense and defense, scoring 258 points and giving up 300. Plun- kett had his best season in three with the Pats, completing 51.3 per cent of his passes for 2550 yards and 13 touchdowns. Nineteen seventy-four was the year of Mini Mack Herron and the Patriots revival as the team ral- lied behind the explosive back that Fairbanks dug out of the Canadien Football League. The Pats finished at 7-7, but a rash of injuries from the mid-season point right through the end hurt. The team won its first five games against the best teams in the NFL. At one point the Pats were 6-1 before losing numerous players as well as six of the last seven games. Herron led the entire NFL in total yardage as there wasn ' t a single thing the 5-5 package of dynamite didn ' t do. He led the Patriots in rushing, receiving, punt and kickoff returns and touchdowns. His 2444 total yards set an all-time NFL mark for combined yards in a season, wiping out the eight-year-old stand- ard set by Gale Sayers of the once- awesome Chicago Bears. Herron was 10th among Ameri- can Football Conference pass re- ceivers with 474 yards, sixth in the rushing department with 824 years, second in the punt return category with 517 yards and 13th amongst kickoff returners with 629 yards. He scored 12 touchdowns, seven on the ground and five by passes to rank second in the Conference. Herron was joined in the Patriot backfield by Sam Cunningham, a second-year man out of Southern California. Before being injured, Cunningham teamed with Herron to provide the Patriots with a one-two punch second to none. Cunning- ham rushed for 811 yards and nine touchdowns and caught 22 passes for another 214 yards and two scores before sitting out the final two games with an injury. Rookie guard John Hannah an- chored an offensive line that pro- vided plenty of holes for Herron and Cunningham, and Fairbanks in- stalled a 3-5 defense that was the key to the Patriots ' s success. With the personnel the Patriots possess and the master mind of Fairbanks behind it all, the Patriots must rank as the up-and-coming team in the National Football League. — Kenneth G. Hughes Reggie Rucker pulls in a pass from Jim Plunkett that ended in a 69-yard touchdown. The Baltimore defender never got any closer than a waving arm away from breaking up the play.