1978-79 BWK Series — Day 16 — Final ends in overtime heartbreak

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This article was published 13/08/2021 (1663 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Memorial Cup final was almost guaranteed to be a classic.

The Brandon Wheat Kings and Peterborough Petes had each won a one-goal decision over the other in the round-robin, and the two teams edged the Trois-Rivières Draveurs on a count back when all three clubs finished 2-2.

Brandon (58-5-9, 125 points) finished first in the Western Hockey League, with Peterborough (49-19-3, 96 points) topping the Ontario Major Junior Hockey League.

Both teams certainly had an abundance of talent.

Brandon had eight future National Hockey League players, including Brad McCrimmon (1,222 NHL regular season games), Brian Propp (1,016), Laurie Boschman (1,009), Steven Patrick (250), Ray Allison (237), Don Dietrich (28), Rick Knickle (14) Dave Chartier (1).

The Petes were certainly no slouches. 

They had 14 future NHLers in Larry Murphy (1,615 NHL games), Keith Crowder (662), Bill Gardner (380), Mark Reeds (365), Jim Wiemer (325), David Fenyves (206), Tim Trimper (190), Greg Theberge (153), Stu Smith (77), Anssi Melametsä (27), Bob Attwell (22), Ken Ellacott (12), Larry Floyd (12) and Rick LaFerriere (1).  

A move off the ice may have ultimately hurt the Wheat Kings. 

Until two days before the May 13 final, the game was scheduled to be played in the Montreal Forum, but a couple of things happened that moved the game to Verdun.

First, the Montreal Canadiens were set to meet the New York Rangers in the Stanley Cup final. Game 1 was set for May 11, but had to be pushed back due to a national political debate that night.

The NHL settled on May 13, but the Canadiens decided they didn’t want anyone in the building before Game 1 of their league final series. 

Instead, the game was moved to the rink in Verdun, which was understandably smaller, warmer and didn’t have the same quality of ice.

“The night before was the worst because you couldn’t sleep,” Dave Chartier said. “I remember saying ‘Hey, we need some sleep here because we have a big game tomorrow.’ I never drank back then or partied and it wasn’t hard for me to do that, but honest to God, but when we went to overtime, I maybe had six shifts all game. I think I had a chance to score and hit the outside of the post. That would have been the winner if I could have done it.”

That was important because of the very different styles the two teams played. The high-flying Wheat Kings wanted to skate and trade chances. The Petes, on the other hand, were built around limiting the other team’s chances.

“It was a frustrating game for our team to play,” kelly McCrimmon said. “In junior hockey, that just never happened. As time has gone on, you see those kinds of games and see those kind of series, but in junior hockey at that time, teams didn’t play that way. It was probably a little bit challenging for our guys to face the trap.”

Both teams had their own vocal cheering sections.

“It was great to see the fans who came out to Montreal,” Stephen Patrick said. “That was huge and you don’t really pick up on that until years down the road.”

After 20 minutes, the teams were tied 1-1, the score they would eventually take into overtime.

RAY ALLISON: “That rink with those people in there, it was hot.”

STEPHEN PATRICK: “I always bug Dave McDonald about this. It’s funny how sometimes stories take on a life of their own so I may not even be correct but I always tell him he had the puck behind the net and he tried to stuff it and I was wide open in front. We could have won the whole thing. Now when I think of it, I don’t even know if that happened but I ran with that story with him for years.”

DAVE McDONALD: “We played a great team … I remember going up against (Keith) Crowder and Dunc goes ‘Don’t be afraid to take him out.’ ‘OK, Dunc.’ (laughing). Steve Patrick always bugs me that we could have won that game because he was in front of the net and I was behind the net. He was wide open and I went to pass the puck and I had a little saucer pass over the guy’s stick and it would have been a goal but then the guy lifted up his stick and it never got there. I remember that. It could have been the winning goal.”

BRIAN PROPP: “Unfortunately, in the last game, it would have been a little different if we had played in Montreal because we had a better skating team but what a game it was, ending in overtime. It was good teams and both goalies played really well. I scored one goal and was going to get the second one and just missed. Otherwise we could have won but we had lots of chances.”

GREGG DRINNAN: “The Wheat Kings looked like they were stuck in quicksand. Now whether that was because they were running on fumes or because Peterborough was so good defensively, it was probably a combination of both. Peterborough was really disciplined, that’s how Gary Green coached in the NHL, up and down, up and down, one on one, check, check your man and all that. The thing I remember the most is that the top line just couldn’t get on track, couldn’t get going. When they did have the puck, they just couldn’t do anything with it. The situation they were in, I think, is that their head was likely telling them to do something and their body just couldn’t do it. They were done.”

MIKE PEROVICH: “I remember how tense I was. Seeing that game and all the exposure and just the fact that I couldn’t be out there was gut wrenching. You want to be in the action so bad and you’re sitting up there with a busted-up arm. It was tense. It was tough to watch. It’s tough to watch any game when you’re injured, but a game of that magnitude, that was tough.”

DAVE McDONALD: “The only time Brad wasn’t on the ice, he was in the penalty box.”

LAURIE BOSCHMAN: “Gary Green was their coach, and after he went to Washington and I think he was the youngest coach in the NHL at the time. They were just grinding us with four lines — I remember that very much — and Dunc shortened the bench to three lines. We were just going out all the time.”

BRANT KIESSIG: “Brad McCrimmon, Ray Allison, Brian Propp were exhausted because Dunc was thinking we could lose the thing and kept throwing those guys out there because that’s the way the machinery had been working all year and all of a sudden it wasn’t working. I think Dunc had trouble adjusting us because we were so mechanical in the way we were playing. We didn’t have time to figure Peterborough out. I’m totally convinced that if we even played a best-of-five against them, we would have crushed them because we would have figured it out. We just didn’t have time in that format.”

RICK KNICKLE: “It was more bittersweet for me. I didn’t play. It was the last game and you would like to play. Could I have talked to the coaches that I should play and do all those theatrics that some goalies do? I understood the scenario. I wasn’t at the top of my game.”

BRIAN PROPP: “It all comes down to winning. We had a chance the win the Memorial Cup and had our chances. A bounce here and a bounce there, it was like me not winning a Stanley Cup five times … It’s just saying you lost. I think most people who knew our team was so unbelievable and still remember that today. The fans were unbelievable, we packed the rink a lot of times. The team and the fans did a lot of things together, would hang out together and meet other people. It was understanding how special of a year it was.”

DAVE McDONALD: “It was very intense. It easily could have gone either way. I think Dunc had Boschman’s line playing every second shift, which I don’t know if that was the right thing to do or not but they were the goal scorers and Dunc was the coach. In the third period there were a lot of guys who didn’t see the ice and I think (Peterborough) played everybody. That’s the way it goes, you have a game plan. It was a good game. I got ice time but I know some guys didn’t get very much.”

 

OVERTIME

The dagger came off the stick of Petes forward Bob Attwell two minutes and 38 seconds into extra time when he sent a rebound past Bart Hunter to end Brandon’s season. It was a shocking development for an exhausted team that had done so much winning over the previous nine months.

DAVE CHARTIER: “We were played out. We played a lot of hockey.”

DAVE STEWART: “It was a good experience but a bad one at the same with the outcome. In the overtime, I was just done. It’s too bad the season had to end that way, but that’s the way it is.”

KELLY McCRIMMON: “It was really, really disappointing. We had such a good year and such an incredible team … It was really sad with all the 19-year-olds who had been through three playoffs.”

LAURIE BOSCHMAN: “I remember the sheer disappointment of getting to the final game and then losing in overtime.”

TIM LOCKRIDGE: “I was devastated. I’m not proud of this but I didn’t even stay on the ice to shake hands. To this day I regret that. I was so devastated because I didn’t think we were going to lose that game. As soon as they scored that goal, I think the dressing room was right down the hallway behind our bench and I just turned around and went down the hallway and didn’t stay on the ice for the presentation. I think I was the only guy who didn’t do that. I guess you can call me a poor loser.”

DAVE McDONALD: “Everybody was just stunned that we lost. It was a bad feeling. It was more that we lost the game, not that we weren’t going to play as a team anymore together. That was more when you return home and think about it. After the game, it was ‘Oh geez, we should have won this game.’ Guys were kind of upset.”

 

 

DRESSING ROOM

RAY ALLISON: “Some of it is the fact you didn’t win and some of it is that it’s all over. That team, the people, it’s all over. Tomorrow is never going to be the same because we’re all going away. It was my last game in junior and it turned out that 10 guys were drafted so that team was never going to be put back together. I think part of it was that. For me, it was that it was over. Not only is the game over, that part of my life is now over and you wonder what’s going to happen tomorrow.”

RICK KNICKLE: “I can vaguely remember coming back into the dressing room in disbelief, in shock. There were a lot of tears. You’re still teenagers, and you know it’s something you fought a lot for and it just slipped through your fingers in one split second.”

DAVE CHARTIER: “As a 17-year-old, I don’t think it sunk in until after. We were definitely disappointed. We had champagne and we didn’t see any come out. We didn’t have our hats or get the rings. All that stuff you think about … After we lost, there was a big hole there.”

RICK KNICKLE: “Looking around the room and seeing the disappointment, first off you know you’re a better team. Sports are that way sometimes. They frustrated us, and the defensive team won over the offensive team. I came back the next year but it wasn’t the same team at all. Half the guys were gone and it was pretty much over.”

KELLY ELCOMBE: “You don’t get a chance to win many things after you’re done. I did play for 10 years after junior. You think at some point you’re going to win something and I never did. Then you look back on what was successful, and first and foremost it was that team. I think of that whole process — I don’t think about it all the time but I do reflect on it the odd time — and it was a great experience. That whole thing and going on that run and how disappointing it was. I guess that’s the only downside to it because by all accounts it was one of the best junior teams ever just because we had so many stars. To not come away to validate that with the Memorial Cup, that’s probably the toughest thing, and not so much for me, but guys like Brad, the stars and Laurie and on and on. We were the best team, in my mind, to never win the Memorial Cup.”

WES COULSON: “In the dressing room, it was disappointment. There is no question about it, it was total, total disappointment. There was hardly a word spoken for a little bit. I don’t know if Dunc came in but the silence was broken and I don’t know who it was or who said what, but it was ‘Hey guys, we gave it what we had and fell short. Let’s get showered up.’ I can remember there were cigars brought into the room and I want to say there was a box or two of beer ended up in our room and we sat around. You took your skates off and just sat. You were mentally and physically exhausted, at least that’s the way I felt. You gave it everything you had but it just wasn’t enough. I remember going around the room and shaking the guys’ hands for the great year. Then it was ‘Well, we don’t have to go to practice tomorrow. Who wants to go out and have a few beer and get something to eat?”

DON GILLEN: “It’s one of those experiences that you’re too young to understand. You have a lot of emotion and none of it is good, but you don’t even understand what it is.”

STEPHEN PATRICK: “You certainly feel bad for the older guys in that situation … It was heartbreaking losing.”

MIKE PEROVICH: “You never get over something like that. It’s in the back of your mind all the time. It’s ‘What if this or what if that.’ I think about it all the time but that’s why they play the games.”

LAURIE BOSCHMAN: “I remember the empty feeling because we accomplished so much in the regular season. You get through your league, you win the league, you lose the first two (at the Memorial Cup) and then you come back strong. It’s just such a letdown to come so far and to lose in overtime. I just remember feeling so empty. But I remember that I gave it all I’ve got, and that could be said for every one of us. It was a great disappointment.”

DAVE CHARTIER: “Every game, the winners have the story about being the winners, and the losers have the story about how we missed. They had a good team. The Petes were good.”

RAY ALLISON: “It was a little bit bittersweet because you’ve gone all that way and you want to win and you don’t. I thought we did all right. My memory of it is a little foggy because I ran out of gas.”

GREGG DRINNAN: “They were devastated but I don’t think they were surprised. I don’t remember a whole lot of tears in the dressing room, but overall this was a pretty mature bunch. At that point in time, in the short time after the game, I think they had maybe prepared themselves for it because of what they had been through. They really were running on fumes at that time and there might have even been a sense of relief that the season was over.”

 

BACK IN BRANDON

TIM LOCKRIDGE: “I remember the convertible parade. It was really neat. We were overwhelmed that we got that kind of response when we got back to town. Everybody was so proud of what the Wheat Kings had accomplished so that was kind of neat. It was quite the day actually, and I think we partied for about two days after that. There was probably a lot of talking and hugging and weird conversations going on at the time. That’s how close we were as a group.”

MIKE PEROVICH: “It was unbelievable. Nothing like that would ever happen on the West Coast. People out there are so friendly. That was something. I was impressed by that.”

LAURIE BOSCHMAN: “It was extremely meaningful that people cared. We had some great fans in Brandon for the Wheat Kings in those years that I played and they’re still great hockey fans in Brandon. It meant an awful lot but it felt rather empty because we wanted to win the Memorial Cup trophy. That was certainly our goal, and we came short, so we every disappointed.”

GREGG DRINNAN: “I just remember how giant the celebration was. I was so happy to see it because the players deserved it. The attendance at times that season wasn’t very good but it had certainly picked up. By that time, everyone in the city was on board. I just thought, man, it’s really great that the community, the city is recognizing what these kids have done because even though they didn’t win the last game, they accomplished so much. You can arguably say that was the greatest team in WHL history. Five losses. Who knows what it would have been if they played overtime back in those days. If they played overtime, how many games would Propp and Allison and Boschman and Brad McCrimmon have ended it in the first minute of overtime, the first time they got the puck? Seeing the faces on some of the players, it was ‘Holy smokes, we really mean something to these people.’ They were surprised there was anything to start with, and then to be in the back of the convertibles was like a Stanley Cup parade. I think it really meant a lot to them. It was a really joyous celebration.”

KELLY McCRIMMON: “It was really nice. The Wheat Kings have always been a great franchise and have always been a big part of the city.”

RICK KNICKLE: “We were really shocked there were that many people out. But when you think about it, the Brandon fans really supported us and got to watch a good product. Sometimes they didn’t fill the house because it was going to be another 8-2 game. The fans in Brandon realized how good a team we were, and being such a small town, everybody we see we know. We went to school with a lot of the guys and girls, or it was parents we know. That’s the good thing about junior hockey in small towns.”

RAY ALLISON: “I always thought the people in Brandon were really good fans. They were knowledgeable hockey people. When you go into a rink and play there three-and-a-half years, and maybe four years with the Travellers, it was kind of like your home. The Keystone Centre was a friendly place and I always liked the people in Brandon. To come back to a reception like we got was pretty impressive. You don’t get to do many things like that in a life. That was nice.”

DAVE CHARTIER: “I’ll never forget, I had a plaid suit jacket. You would have thought we were movie stars, going around and tooting the horn. The feeling back then was surreal. I was only 17 years old so I had never witnessed it before and I didn’t realize what we had. I realize now what we had back then. We went on the stage and we were all treated like heroes and the town was there to support us. It was unbelievable for us.”

STEPHEN PATRICK: “I think it was really important because you don’t ever get to do that, and you don’t really see the fans. There is more stuff now where the players are in the community where we probably didn’t do as much back then because it wasn’t the thing. It was a little bit melancholy because it’s over and you’re going home in a day.”

 

SAYING GOODBYE

DAVE STEWART: “It was kind of one of those ‘Aw s—, I wish we had another year.’ That year, most of us were 19 and in our last year. Everybody wishes they had another crack at it but that’s just the way it is. You miss the guys in the dressing room and the good time you used to have after the games and during camp and stuff like that. You miss it.”

TIM LOCKRIDGE: “I don’t think it even really kicked in. That next fall I ran into Brad and Brian at exhibition games in Philadelphia and Boston, and maybe then it kicked in, that I’m not going to see these guys very much anymore.”

 

» Tomorrow: Looking back at greatness.

» pbergson@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @PerryBergson