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Tat,tat,tat,tat.
Tat,tat,tat,tat.
I strike the plastic blade of my Franklin street-hockey stick repeatedly on the concrete to signal that I'm open. Dave Grandin feathers a sweet pass to the center of the band of black electrical tape wound around my blade. Everything, from the way I carry my stick to my wild flowing hair, is designed to mimic the style of the NHL heroes that I worship on TV between Peter Puck segments. I one-time it high over the baseball-glove-outfitted left hand of Dave's brother, Andy, whose parents finally had succumbed to months of begging and gotten him the pair of Bauer goalie pads he'd mentioned with every waking breath, as his No. 1 gift the previous Christmas.
"He shoots, he scores. GILLLLLLLLLLLBEERRRRRRRRT PERRRRRRRRAAUUUUUUUUULT," I yell in my best Ted Darling voice. "The French Connection strikes again."
The year is 1975. It's mid-May, and the hometown Buffalo Sabres are battling the hated Philadelphia Flyers for Lord Stanley's Cup. I'm 10 years old and completely awash with Stanley Cup fever. So is most everyone in my neighborhood, the 18th Street section of the city's North End.
America, as a whole, has many problems to keep it occupied. It's been less than a year since Richard Nixon resigned the Presidency in disgrace over the fallout from the Watergate scandal. The Vietnam War is rapidly screaming to a close as North Vietnamese troops marched into Saigon, just some 15 days before the Sabres and Flyers began battling. The country is embroiled in an energy crisis and a new sound called "disco" is starting to corrupt radio airwaves from coast to coast. To make matters worse, we're dealing with these gut-wrenching issues clad in bell-bottoms, platform shoes and mood rings.
But none of this matters along 18th Street, where the upstart Buffalo Sabres, in only their fifth year of existence, have captured the imaginations of young and old alike.
I ride my Schwinn five-speed, with banana seat and 3-foot-high sissy bar, to Grobengeiser and Sons corner market on South and 18th streets. Percussion is provided courtesy of the Bobby Clarke trading card that I have clothes-pinned to the bike's forks so that my spokes rap against Bobby's head just as I hope "King Kong" Korab will do in the series. Before the finals, I never would have used a card with the value of Flyer Captain Clarke's for such an ignoble purpose. Any expansion Cleveland Baron or defunct California Golden Seal card would've done. But desperate times call for desperate measures, and I am no less superstitious than my heroes on the ice are. The Sabres, to a man, have let their beards grow since the start of the playoffs and will only shave after they've swilled a little of the bubbly from the Stanley Cup itself.
I enter Grobey's to find Eddie and Harold, the sons in Grobengeiser and Sons--both near retirement age themselves, their Dad alive only on the placard above the storefront window--in hot debate over the results of the first two games of the series, both Flyer wins in Philadelphia. "Rene Robert couldn't hit the net if ya gave him a piņata stick. And Rico (Martin), he should rename himself Casper cuz he's been invisible since Kate Smith sung the "Star Spangled Banner" before Game 1. And don't even get me started about Bert (Gilbert Perrault)--why if that bum walked in here now, I wouldn't even spot him a Pepsi. He's wearing the "C" fer chrissakes! Where's the leadership?" bellowed Eddie.
"You got it all wrong, it's the Flyer's goalie, wassisname, (Bernie) Parent, he's standing on his head out there. They're never gonna beat him," countered Harold.
I quickly get the handful of items that my great-grandmother sent me for, tossing in a box of lemonheads and a giant pixie-stix for myself, sign them to her monthly store account and step back outside to hear the same debates going on up and down the avenue.
At Ace Hobby Shop, someone is questioning whether the checking line of Gare, Luce and Ramsay is doing a good enough job closing down the Flyer goal scorers like Dornhoefer and Lonsberry. At the Ideal Bowling Lanes, a fat man, wearing a hat much too small for his head, is telling anyone that will listen that the trade deadline acquisition of Fred Stanfield from the Boston Bruins was a complete waste of energy. At Chapman's Drug Store, Old Man Chapman is saying that it all went downhill when former Sabre Head Coach Joe Crozier bolted the team for the Vancouver Blazers of the upstart World Hockey Association just before the season began. And at the Pizza Pantry, a young college kid with a Greg Brady hairstyle wryly states that even Taro Tsujimoto couldn't pull the Sabres out of the hole that they're in--a reference to a fictitious player "drafted" by Sabre General Manager Punch Imlach the past spring, in protest to the tedious drafting process being conducted via telephone, Tsujimoto meaning "Sabre" in Japanese.
The good news is that Game 3 will be back in Buffalo.
Game 3 turned out to be a game for the ages and the highlight of the season for Sabre's fans. The game will forever be known as the "fog game," as unusually warm temperatures, combined with Memorial Auditorium's noted lack of air-conditioning, caused a thick fog to cover the ice surface for much of the game. The game was halted many times so that the players could skate rapidly around the ice, like a frozen version of Roller Derby, to help dissipate the fog.
The game also is the one in which Sabre winger Jim Lorentz became known as "Batman." A bat was flying in and out of the fog throughout the game, dive-bombing many of the players. The bat made the mistake of flying too close to Lorentz and he swatted it out of the air and sent it to bat heaven. No one on the ice, including the officials, wanted to pick up the bat for removal. Finally, Flyer Rick MacLeish carried it to the penalty box.
Between the theatrics, however, the Sabre hopefuls were treated to one whale of a game. With Philly nursing a 3-2 lead, Buffalo Goalie Gerry DesJardins pulled himself from the game. Roger Crozier, the venerable veteran who had been injured before the start of the playoffs, skated to the crease to the delight of the crowd. Crozier was spectacular in the fog, and the game went into overtime tied 4-all. At 18:29 of the overtime period, Rene Robert beat Parent from a bad angle, aided tremendously by the fog, and the Sabres were back in the series.
Although the Sabres took Game 4 by the score of 4-2, Parent and the Flyers were too tough, and the Flyers won the Cup in 6. Parent was named the Conn Smyth Trophy winner as the most valuable player, deservedly so.
"I see Bernie Parent in my soup everyday. He was probably the finest goalie I ever faced," remarked Rene Robert when it was all said and done.
They had a ticker-tape parade in Philadelphia when the Flyers hoisted the Stanley Cup on May 27, 1975. They partied and danced in the streets until dawn. Back home, the Sabres shaved silently in front of their bathroom mirrors, their thoughts preoccupied with dreams of next season. People turned their attention away from hockey and back to the bleak issues from which the run to Lord Stanley's cup had provided respite--back to lying Presidents, gas lines and ugly killing wars.
As confetti fell in Philadelphia, the tears of a 10-year-old Sabre's fanatic fell to the ground in Niagara Falls. He cried for what was lost--the Stanley Cup, hope, a perfect end to the perfect season, innocence--and 18th Street cried along with him.