The Regina Pats won their third Memorial Cup.
I was going to post pictures of the stories that appeared in the paper but I decided that I would transcribe them word-for-word. There are four stories (minus a couple of typos) that appeared in the May 13th (the day after the game) edition of The Leader-Post, I've also added the picture of the game summary.
Here are the direct links: Main Story by Dale Eisler |
Bob Hughes Column |
Everything is beautiful... even the referee |
No mothers allowed! A room full of happiness by Dale Eisler |
Game Summary
Regina Pats have had their ups and downs
throughout the 1973-74 season, but today
the downs are distant history, mainly because...
THE PATS ARE NO. 1
Remparts are victims of a familiar style
By DALE EISLER
L-P Sports Writer
CALGARY – They have a knack for the dramatic and a feel for the unforgettable. But most of all, Regina Pats had a yearning for the Memorial Cup.
Today they can stop yearning and start celebrating because the Pats are the champions of Canadian junior hockey, which means the hunt for the Memorial Cup has finally ended.
Sunday night the Pats took aim on target the impossible and left with a 7-4 win over the Quebec City Remparts as the 1974 Memorial Cup came down to a pulsating close.
And, they did it in a style that has become the essence of a team that has stared doom in the face before and lived to talk about it the next day.
What the Pats did was surge to life from the depths of despair by spotting the Remparts an early 3-0 first period lead before climbing the stairway to the stars in the final two periods that left most of the 7,382 fans at the Corral bugged and breathless.
For 17 minutes and 31 seconds of the first period the Pats appeared on the brink of ruination as Remparts pumped three quickies past Pat drain plug Ed Staniowski. Then it started. Clark Gillies sent Pats on the road to recovery that didn't end until Dennis Sobchuk put the final grip on the cup with an empty net goal with only 33 seconds remaining.
Sobchuk's goal capped a three-goal evening as the "Cincinnati Kid" and eight of his teammates played their last game of junior hockey.
This was a game with Sobchuk at his best. Before it started people were saying Pats' big guns were going to have to open up if the Pats were going to get past Remparts, a scrappy bunch that live and die on their speed.
They did in this one because Sobchuk and the others came to play. It was as if destiny was a part of the show and Remparts just didn't fit into the scheme of things.
But it took more than Sobchuk. It took guys like Rick Uhrich, named the tournament's all star right-winger, and Glen Burdon, voted the best centre in the show.
Uhrich scored one goal, on a power play, while Burdon put the game to rest with another one of his gut-wrenching individual displays that gave the Pats a 6-4 lead with Remparts putting the heat on in the dying minutes. Rob Tudor, a centreman who has been waiting for a chance to play centre, and got it on this, the final night, scored the other Pats goal.
Remparts, who went on a rampage early to lead 3-1 after the first and trailed 5-3 after two, were led by Jacques Locas with a pair while singles went to Charles Constatin and Andre Perreault.
Constantin, Perreault and Locas bolted the Remparts to their early lead, but in the process they shocked the Pats out of a slumber that didn't finally erupt until the Pats banked home four unanswered goals in the second period.
"We've been down before and come back and we knew we could do it again," was the way Sobchuk explained the Pats resurgence in the second period." "I think the turning point was when we started hitting them in the second period."
That had been the Pats' plan of attack all along, but the only problem in the first period was they weren't playing it that way. They let the Remparts fly and it cost them.
They came out hitting in the second, and after Sobchuk ripped a power-play blast past Remparts' goalie Robert Sauve, the beginning of the end had started.
Coach Bob Turner, who won five Stanley Cups during his years in the National Hockey League and said this one meant more than anything else, was even more specific about what turned the tide. He looked to a unanimous decision Clark Gillies pounded out over Richard Nantais midway through the second period as what gave the Pats the momentum.
The score was deadlocked at 3-3 at the time and it took only a minute and 13 seconds for Uhrich to give the Pats a lead they were never to relinquish on a power-play.
"It was pretty quiet in the dressing room after the first period," explained a sweaty Staniowski. "But we knew this was our biggest game of the year and no one was going to win it for us."
But, in the midst of all the jubilation, Staniowski was a little displeased with his performance in the first period.
"I just wasn't concentrating. Their second goal went off one of our defenceman's legs, but I still should have had it," said Eddie. "Before they got their third goal I said to myself that I had to concentrate more… on the puck and the angles."
The rest of the team must have had a similar thought.
Although they had their moments in the first period the Pats didn't cut loose until they took dead aim on the title and Remparts in the second.
"It was like the comeback we had in the second game of the Swift Current series," figured Uhrich. "The only difference is that this one was a lot bigger and better."
"The whole team through with a super effort. We knew it was do or die, but we knew we could do it."
Defenceman Greg Joly, who assisted on the first two Pat goals and started controlling the game in the second period like he had done earlier in the week, didn't know how to explain the turnabout.
"It was such an important game, the kind that you could not make one mistake and expect to win," Joly said. "Everyone knew we had come back before and we just knew we could do it again."
What made the job a little easier was the work of people who haven't been counted on for big things in the past before. People such as Rob Tudor, the rookie who played perhaps his best game of the year. Tudor had a simple explanation for his success.
"I've been waiting since Christmas to play centre," said Tudor, who most of the season patrolled the right side for Pats third line with Dave Faulkner and Bill Bell.
Faulkner, who dislocated his right elbow on Wednesday, was unfit to play so Turner moved Tudor to centre and added Mike Wanchuk on the right side. It was a combination that gave the Remparts trouble all night.
"I never carry the puck as a rule when I play the wing," confessed Tudor. "I just don't have the good breaking speed. But at centre I can roam more... I like roaming… and I think that's why things went so well for me tonight."
It was a night that Tudor and the rest of his buddies won't forget for a long time.
Passing Notes: Sobchuk, Joly and Rempart defenceman Richard Perron were named the three stars, with Joly joining Burdon and Uhrich on the all-star team with Sauve in goal and Perron and Quebec left-winger Real Cloutier... the Pats took 10 of 18 minors and the teams split two majors... Pats outshot the Remparts 52-31, with the biggest Pat barrage coming in the second period when they outshot the Remparts 22-4.
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| Pats' coach Bob Turner is hoisted aloft in traditional style as Pats celebrate their national championship. |
Bob Hughes Column
CALGARY – It was a victory born from the frustrations of a 44-year drought, a night the Regina Pats took a stranglehold on an impossible sort of dream and choked it into reality.
Every once in a while teams like the Regina Pats drift onto the sporting scene. They are so rare, they should be packaged and put on display somewhere. Granted, they have had the magic of superstardom all along. But, they also had guts. That's what won it for them here Sunday night. Guts.
With all the subtleness of an elephant gone berserk, they out-gutted a Quebec Rempart team which turned its skates into wings here last night and threatened to hang the Pats by double figures on the scoreboard in the Calgary Corral.
The Pats trailed 3-0, and 7,300 fans wondered where the flowers should be sent. "I tell you," wheezed coach Bob Turner, "I felt sick. I thought we were going to get beat 11-3."
Then, destiny took over. Pats plugged into their strength. They tuned in on desire. They attached themselves to the tail of a rare belief that no matter what happened they would not be beaten and they rode it to a fascinating 7-4 victory which propelled them to Regina's first Memorial Cup championship in 44 years.
God, it was something to see!
It was a lot of things, some of them sitting there in the statistical summary. It was Pats roaring back and out-shooting Remparts 22-4 in a bizarre second period in which the only club on the ice wore blue and white. They fired home four goals in that second to slip ahead 5-3 and then when things got touchy in the third, Pats obscure miracle worker went to work.
He is Glen Burdon, and he is what they call a gamebreaker.
Three minutes after Remparts had sliced the Regina lead to 5-4 and with only two minutes to go in the game, Burdon took over. He out-hustled everybody to the puck, ripped in on goalie Robert Sauve and scored the clincher. Just like that, he did it.
It is not the first time Burdon has reached deep and lifted Pats into a never-never land that separates the champions from all the rest. He did it in the Swift Current series, scoring the goal that spurred the Pats to an amazing comeback victory. Twice, against Calgary Centennials, he scored the winning goals in a series that gave Pats the Western Canada Hockey League championship.
Last night he did it again. He just took over, and got the game decided.
"What can I say about that guy?" Turner would tell you later. "He has the desire and the will to win. He just said, let's get this thing over with and... bing... he gets it over with."
They asked Turner Sunday night what he thought it was that carried Pats to such giddy heights this season, and they thought he would say it was Dennis Sobchuk, or Greg Joly, or Clark Gillies because they are of the super-star class. "I thought really it was the team spirit," Turner told them. "They just never quit. We had to come up with a 125 per cent effort, and the kids did it. They wanted to win it and, by golly, they did. We've never panicked. We've never quit."
The game was the last of a brilliant junior career for Sobchuk, Joly and Gillies. They went out in such magnificent style, felt such overwhelming emotion, that even all the money they will now be skating into as professionals will never equal it.
"They were there tonight," Turner said. "I knew we had to have a big game from them. I told Dennis before the game started that if he was named the first star of the game (Sobchuk was), we would have the Memorial Cup back in the West. He said... and these are his exact words... "I'll be one of the stars."
This was the hockey game everybody had hoped for. It was the Pats, a bunch of uncatchables falling behind quickly and then picking themselves up in such resounding fashion that the feeling which sizzled through the capacity crowd could be described only as electrifying.
There were though, moments when even Turner suspected his club might be knocking on the door of desperation. "When it was 3-0, I was shook up pretty good," he said. "I thought we might be waiting another 44 years."
But, when he got to the dressing room after that hairy first period, spirits were hardly sagging. "I didn't have to say anything to them," Turner said, "mainly because I couldn't. They were hollering so much. I just knew, right then, we were going to win. They were like that when we shut out St. Catharines. They just get mad, and fed up and away they go."
And, that's when the no-names started to take over. It was the kids such as Rob Tudor, Rick Uhrich, Kim MacDougall, Mike Harazny, Robbie Laird and so on responding to the massive challenge with a quality you could only call, true grit.
They are like that, this hockey club. They were pieced together with the idea that some day they may cart home the ultimate of junior hockey championships.
But, it was their unyielding desire to excel and to win and to be better than any other Regina team before them in the last 44 years that kept all the pieces laced together when it came down to the crunch time in the Corral.
Everything is beautiful… even the referee
Sunday night was a night when Bob Turner found just about everything to his liking, opposition and officiating included.
Turner said he believed his club deserved to win in a post-game news conference, but "don't sell those Remparts short.
"They're as good a club as we've met all year," he said.
Turner was also pleased with referee Kerry Fraser of Sarnia, Ont., who spent much of the season working in the WCHL.
"He let us play hockey – that’s the way it has to be in a national final," said Turner.
No mothers allowed!! A room full of happiness
By DALE EISLER
L-P Sports Writer
CALGARY – Greg Joly and his father Ralph embraced during an emotional scene in the Regina Pats dressing room Sunday night.
Joly had just helped his team – Regina Pats – win a Memorial Cup and in the process he had been named the most-valuable player in the round-robin tournament.
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| Joly receiving congratulations from Torchy Schell with his MVP Trophy. |
It was Mother's Day here too on Sunday, but it was only Joly's father who was allowed in the dressing room since hockey players parade about in various degrees of undress after a game and women, like Joly's mother, must wait before offering their congratulations.
For Joly, and the rest of the Pats, this was a private moment. A piece of ecstasy they had been chasing for years. It was a moment that Joly talked about with a near reverence.
"It's a shame that all this has come to an end," muttered Joly. "Most of us on this team have been together for three years and now we'll have to go our separate ways. These guys are just the greatest."
Joly is one of nine of the Pats who have played their last game of junior hockey. But, for Joly, unlike some of them, this is only the tip of the iceberg.
Right now at least two teams in the National Hockey League desperately want Joly to play for them. By winning the most-valuable-player trophy at the Cup, Joly will be making himself a heap of money whoever he plays for next season.
But that didn't seem important to Joly last night. "It's hard to leave guys like this. We were a really close team, I even lived with a couple of them, but I guess a time comes when you have to leave," Joly said.
On this night Joly preferred not to talk about where he will be going. He admitted that he has a few ideas of who I want his talents on their side next year, but he didn't think it was important at this time.
When you realize that Joly may be on the road to millions as a professional hockey mercenary, and he still thought it secondary at the time, you can appreciate what the Memorial Cup meant to him. Simply, it's something that money can't buy.
Joly and the rest of the Pats grabbed their Memorial Cup, the first for the Pats since 1930, with a tangible like hard work and an intangible called desire.
And one of the keys to the vault of emotions was Joly, a defenceman who can control the game when the motivation hits him.
For the first period Sunday Joly and a lot of other people didn't have the motivation and you could tell by taking one glance at the score where the Remparts led 3-1.
But everything changed in the second period. Joly was carrying the puck, controlling the play and the Pats were forging a path into the hockey history books.
In the third period Joly gave the fans a taste of what they have learned to expect from him since they adopted the Pats as their darlings when the Memorial Cup started.
Joly took the puck deep in his own territory, and sent shivers through the audience with a rush that ended with him missing the open net after beating three checks and feinting goalie Robert Sauve into immobility.
But Joly wasn't the only one to supply a chance. for the fans to offer their "ooohs and aaahs" in appreciation.
Centre Glen Burdon, who has made a habit of taking things into his own hands during crucial moments of the playoffs, turned the final screws on the lid with a similar race to glory that saw him beat Dom Lemieux to a loose puck before cutting in front of Sauve and tucking the puck between his legs.
"I knew I had room to cut in front and Garth (Malarchuk) told me to carry the puck out in front in a situation like that so the goalie thinks you're shooting for the side and you can slide it between his legs," was Burdon's explanation of the goal's finer points.
This has been a rewarding season for Burdon, who is leaving the team after three years as a regular centre.
He has been the most consistent of the lot throughout the stretch run that started when the team returned from an exhibition series in Sweden last Christmas.
"I don't know why things have been going so well for me lately. It's really hard to explain," he said. "I think I was working just as hard early in the year but things just weren't going too good for me."
His good luck may turn into good fortune, since most scouts expect Burdon to be grabbed in the first round by the NHL when it holds its draft later this month.
Others will be watching the draft with some vested interests, along with Burdon and Joly will be Clark Gillies, Kim MacDougall, Mike Wanchuk, Rick Uhrich, Rob Laird and Bill Bell, all of whom have reached the junior retirement age.
Dennis Sobchuk is the other Pat graduating, but he has already signed with the Cincinnati Stingers of the World Hockey Association and will play for Phoenix next year since the Stingers' new arena will not be completed until the 1975-76 season.
The rest will undoubtedly be back next year when the Pats return to square one in the vicious circle of building a winner.
One of those who will be a big part of the team again next year as he was this, will be trainer "enormous" Norman Fong.
For Normie, this is his second Canadian championship in six months. He was the equipment man for the Regina Rams when they won the national junior football crown in November.
"This is becoming routine for me," piped up Fong after being tossed in the shower. Naturally he was only joking.
The Summary
