The strange happenings of 1971

Hobey Baker Memorial Rink has a seating capacity of 2,092.

Yet on Saturday, March 6, 1971, about 2,400 fans packed into its stands to cheer on the hockey team in the season's final match. Even University president Robert Goheen and his wife were there.

In three periods of exciting play, the Tigers kept up with their opponent Dartmouth, but towards the end of the third period Princeton was trailing, 4-2.

At 18 minutes, 57 seconds, John Hepburn '72 scored off of an assist from Laurence Sanford '72 in what The Daily Princetonian of that Monday, March 8, called "a perfectly executed charge."

The goal was not enough to win the game, but brought the crowd to its feet anyway. As the Tigers skated off the ice, the fans gave them a two-minute standing ovation.

And with that the worst hockey season in Princeton history was over. The loss brought the team's final record to 1-22.

'Pessimistic optimism'

Princeton hockey had recorded some successful years in its recent past; the 1967-68 team had gone 13-10-1 and qualified for the Eastern College Athletic Conference tournament. That year was the first of Bill Quackenbush's six seasons as head coach of the team. (Quackenbush, a former NHL All-Star, also coached men's golf and women's hockey at Princeton in the 1970s and '80s.)

But the 1968-69 team had gone 5-18, and the team a year later went 5-17-1. At the start of the 1970-71 campaign, with a sophomore-heavy lineup and only four seniors, Quackenbush expressed at best "pessimistic optimism."

Optimism, pessimistic or otherwise, was quickly dashed as the Tigers lost their first 11 games.

"[The Tigers] played all these spectacular teams that were all ranked in the top 20 in the country, and they couldn't beat any of them," David Elkind '73, who covered the team for the 'Prince' that year, said.

"They had a handful of guys who could play. There was one guy, [John Stuckey '72], who was also in the [Students for Democratic Society, a liberal organization]. I think he sort of typified the team: he had long hair, probably the most talented of the recruits . . . This was quite an interesting group of characters."

After the team's loss to Boston College — its 10th straight — a frustrated coach Quackenbush told the 'Prince', "Empty uniforms without players in them could have done better than our guys did . . . I had faith in these guys, but I just don't understand them."

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"There's just no winning spirit on this team," one player said.

When the Tigers finally snapped their losing streak in January, with a 5-4 victory over Colgate, the 'Prince' ran an exuberant headline — "HOCKEY WINS!" — across the sports page, but also a joking front-page story, reporting that the team's victory had been nullified by the ECAC in light of revelations that six of the team's players had managed the win only with the aid of "speed" — that is, methamphetamines. According to the fictitious article, Quackenbush was quitting and he, Stuckey, and Rick Ostrow '71 were moving to Cuba to grow sugarcane.

The team continued to play, and to lose, the rest of that winter. Though the Tigers did not always play extremely poorly, they just couldn't seem to win. To make matters worse the team lost seven players to injury, ineligibility, or academic troubles in February.

'Puck off, Dartmouth'

In the spring semester of 1971, the Grateful Dead played a concert in Dillon Gym. Huey Newton and a young William F. Buckley, Jr. spoke at Princeton, as American troops were moving through Vietnam. The advertisements in the 'Prince' hawked abortions and engagement rings and $225 first-class flights to Europe.

The advertisements on Friday, March 5, though, were not just about renting a Pinto for five cents a day. Wilson College told Dartmouth to "puck off." Tiger Inn reminded the Tigers, "Don't forget to skate." The Wine and Game Shop on Nassau Street encouraged fans to "tank up and to the rink — Let's Get Them."

Indeed, that issue of the 'Prince' carried advertisements from almost all of the eating clubs, as well as various student organizations and local businesses, encouraging the hockey team in its final game.

The Undergraduates for a Stable America's message? "MAKE IT A LIBERAL VICTORY."

The sports page that day, bordered by headshots of standout players, carried the banner headline, "BEAT DARTMOUTH: An Editorial." Dave Elkind exhorted Tiger fans to come out for what "could be the most important Tiger hockey game ever": a loss would mean finishing the season with the worst record in program history. He hailed "the charisma of a team that has a sense of humor about itself."

Dave Franks '72 would report in his Princeton Alumni Weekly sports column that "the underdog team had become the pet of the campus," with the final game "receiving more campus publicity than any previous sports event since Bill Bradley and the 1965 basketball team headed for the NCAAs."

The night before the game, about 150 students and a five-piece band held a rally for the team in Blair Arch — Princeton's first rally in four years, and the first ever for hockey.

Saturday night, the fans packed the rink and cheered the Tigers on to a not-quite victory. Attendance figures had not been terrible that season — ranging from 800 all the way up to 2,000 — but 2,400 was certainly an amazing figure. John Hepburn told the Prince it was "the best crowd I've ever played with." A bemused Dartmouth coach said, "We just pretended they were our fans."

The last-minute goal "was a hell of a way for us to end a season — even if we were 1-22," one player said.

After such a season Princeton hockey had hardly anywhere to go but up, and indeed, the team improved to 5-18 the next year. Although the program has had more losing seasons than winning seasons in its history, the Tigers began to do much better in the 1990s, and have never again matched the abysmal record of 1970-71.

It's unlikely that Baker Rink has ever known quite such a crowd since, either. (Last week, the 3-7 Tigers defeated Yale in front of 1,500 fans.)

"It was probably one of the most exciting sporting events of the year," Elkind said.

"People turned out at the hockey rink that probably didn't even know where it was before then . . . It just shows that you don't have to have a great team for a sporting event to be exciting. Sometimes there's nothing more exciting than being able to root for the underdog."