The Boys of Winter by Wayne Coffey

Author:Wayne Coffey
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307237316
Publisher: Crown/Archetype
Published: 2005-01-10T16:00:00+00:00

St. John’s Hockey: Old School

Not Guts, No Glory.

Harrington signed with Scotty Bowman and the Buffalo Sabres after the Olympics, but he never made the NHL and never was paid his $20,000 signing bonus, either. In his second pro game, with the Sabres’ AHL affiliate in Rochester, he got welcomed by a goon and wound up in the hospital, a bunch of teeth knocked out and his jaw wired shut. He was set to return to Lake Placid—the Sabres’ training-camp site—when Pavelich called him from Switzerland in the late summer of 1980 and said his team had an opening for another American player. Unconvinced that there would be a place for him in Buffalo, Harrington headed for the Alps. He and Pavelich became the most prolific scoring tandem in the top Swiss league.

Life after Lake Placid wasn’t easy at first for Bah Harrington. He felt adrift at times. Ever since Steve Sertich had made the 1976 team, the Olympics had been Harrington’s mission in life. It was what drove him. After it had been achieved beyond all measure, it was almost as if he’d lost his direction, his adrenaline supply. The NHL had never really been a big dream of his, so he never went after it in his full-bore way. He regrets that now. He got into coaching and started as an assistant at the University of Denver, where one of his players was Danny Brooks, Herb’s son. Harrington had some of Herb in him. He’d berate kids and motivate them by keeping them guessing, and he would live and die with every game to the point that Jeff Sauer, coach of Wisconsin, told him, “You’ve got to learn how to lose.”

Harrington got the head job at St. John’s, a Division III school, in 1993. He was almost maniacally intense at first. In between periods of one game he lit into his captain with such a string of curse words he cringes to think about it even now. He slammed one of his wingtip shoes so hard into a rack of water bottles he almost broke a toe. Harrington still isn’t a blithe spirit after a loss, but he has mellowed. Coaching his son, Chris, in a couple of off-season tournaments helped him to realize he wouldn’t want anyone hollering at his son that way. Slowly, haltingly, he began to lighten up.

When he started coaching, Harrington spoke frequently with Brooks and had Brooks-like goals: to be a big-time NCAA coach and win a national championship. Now he is not so sure. Harrington was a finalist for three Division I jobs—at Alaska, Notre Dame, and his alma mater, Minnesota-Duluth—and was passed over each time. He went into the UMD interview thinking the job was all but his. He was crushed when he didn’t get it, and blames himself for his hubris. At St. John’s, Harrington gets great kids who are serious students, kids he can teach and whose lives he can impact. Collegeville is a wonderful community. He’s had great success—St. John’s was 22–4–1 and No.

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