Captain Jack

After 30 years at the helm of the Boston University hockey program, Jack Parker has seen it all and experienced it all, from triumph to tragedy.

There are some who say that Jack Parker has mellowed after 30 years at the helm of the Boston University hockey team.

But when you see him on the ice in his red CCM warm-up suit, red hat, holding on to his stick with gloveless hands, letting loose with that raspy yell of his or furiously blowing on his whistle, he looks as intense as ever.

When he jumps to the gate at the end of the bench, gesturing wildly and screaming almost as loudly with his piercing blue eyes as he is with his mouth at Tim Benedetto or John Gravallese or whichever Hockey East official is lucky enough to draw his ire, he looks like he has plenty of energy.

When his latest captain, senior defenseman Freddy Meyer, just gives a little smile when talking about his coach’s ability to bring the hellfire and brimstone, it’s clear that Jack Parker is doing anything but mellowing out.

No, the coach of BU (and he is THE coach of BU) has more advice to give to young men who want to play college hockey, and as he says, he still has that fire.

‘I’m sure I will [lose the fire for coaching] someday,’ Parker said. ‘Maybe next year, who knows? I hope I recognize that before it happens. I would imagine that’s not gonna happen for a little while.’

Don’t expect it to. BU’s new hockey arena opens up in two years, and Parker already has recruits coming to Commonwealth Avenue for that season — including one Chris Bourque, a blue chip forward whose Pop, Raymond, could play a little blueline back in the day.

And so Jack Parker, who is also the executive director of athletics, will grace BU with his presence for at least a few more years. And to think, all he wanted to do was go into business.

Parker, a Somerville native, graduated in 1968 from BU’s School of Business (now known as the School of Management), with a job at a bank after an excellent college hockey career that saw him win three Beanpots and captain the team in his senior year.

Parker’s entrance into the world of business was disrupted by a request from a former BU teammate. Bill Riley was going to coach at Medford High School, but was offered the chance to coach Lehigh University’s club hockey team and serve as trainer for its football team. He tabbed Parker to fill in for him at Medford. After that season, Parker returned to BU for good, serving under his former coach, Jack Kelley, as a part-time assistant coach while he attended graduate school. From there, Parker took over BU’s freshman team, until scandal struck and BU needed a new mentor for its powerhouse hockey program. Leon Abbot, Kelley’s successor who left to take the coaching and general manager reins of the New England Whalers of the World Hockey Association, was ejected from the post six games into the 1973-74 season.

‘[Abbot] tried to interject some new thoughts and new ways to play and the team wasn’t responding very well and wasn’t doing very well,’ said Ed Walsh, a former All-American goalie and the team captain during Parker’s first season. ‘Cornell accused BU players of accepting some payments, I think it was meal money back in the days when Junior A players couldn’t come and play college hockey. They basically squealed on the kids. We had to forfeit 11 games my junior year.

‘Abbott basically knew that these kids were, in the strictest sense of the word, ineligible, because they had taken some meal money and tried out for a Junior A team. They never played a regular season game but because they took money — about 68 bucks — they were deemed professional players by the NCAA, Cornell ratted on BU, their archrival at the time.

‘Those two situations, my junior year and senior year basically cost Leon Abbott his job.’

It was quite possibly the greatest thing to ever happen to BU hockey. Despite his relative inexperience and the troubling circumstances in which Parker took over, Walsh said the remedy to what ailed the Terriers was immediately apparent.

‘[We could see that Parker was special]. The reason why is because not only had he been a player under Jack Kelley, he had been an assistant coach under Jack Kelley; he bled scarlet; he was BU inside and out,’ Walsh said. ‘As soon as he took over the helm, everybody on the team was happy about that, and we got our confidence back, because everybody knew that BU hockey was back.

‘There were just certain ways that BU went about playing its hockey, and much of that was gone when Jack Kelley left, and it returned when Jack Parker took over.’

And it has stayed that way ever since. Parker now stands as the winningest active coach in college hockey, with a record of 663-331-66, good for a .657 win percentage. More importantly, Parker has won two national championship rings, in 1978 and 1995, and 16 Beanpot championships.

Parker has seen it all, from the decision to put facemasks on helmets in 1980, which he calls ‘a horrible decision,’ that made the game unsafe and less-skilled, to the formation of Hockey East in 1984 to the tragic accident that left BU freshman forward Travis Roy paralyzed the night Parker saw his second national championship banner to the rafters of Walter Brown Arena in October of 1995.

That accident begot a time Parker notes as, ‘The best thing that ever happened to me as a coach was at the time of the worst thing that ever happened to me as a coach. The worst thing that ever happened to me as a coach was the injury of Travis Roy, the best thing that ever happened was how BU and the hockey community reacted to what happened.’

The support from BU administrators like Jon Westling, Dennis Berkey and John Silber, coupled with the support of the BU and general hockey community — Chris Drury, one of BU’s greatest players and Roy’s teammate, still holds a golf tournament in Roy’s name — showed Parker and many others what BU’s hockey program is truly all about. Since then, other tragedies have happened, particularly Sept. 11, when former player Mark Bavis — twin brother of current BU Assistant Coach Mike Bavis — was killed in the attacks. BU hockey reacted much the same, with players from all eras coming together to honor and remember the fallen Terrier. The bond that connects these teams is Parker’s greatest accomplishment as a coach.

‘It doesn’t [take a lot of work to keep in touch] because they all call in here,’ Parker said. ‘I’ve still been here, it’s not like I’ve gone somewhere else, or I’m out of coaching. I’ve been here 30 years and all these guys come in here, they know where to find me and they know my number. That’s a real big plus in coaching, the relationship you have with your former players, and I’ve got a lot of former players.’

Those former players know that the bond between the generations is what makes BU the special program that it is.

‘I went out to eat with him before the reunion of his 1978 [national championship] team, and he was so excited to see those guys,’ Roy said. ‘He wanted me to meet them. He can tell stories about every single guy who’s ever played for him. He’s the glue that binds, he brings all the players together and can connect all the pieces and make the players feel, whether they played 10 years apart or 20 years apart, like they played on the same team.’

While that may seem trivial or even expected of a program with the continuity BU has enjoyed at the helm, it is a fact appreciated by all who come into the Terrier hockey family.

‘There’s no question that there is a tremendous bond between the hockey players,’ Walsh said. ‘It’s carried from generation to generation. I remember when the team in 1978 won the NCAAs, one of the things that Jack O’Callahan said was that ‘Not only is this championship for our team, it’s for everybody else who put on the jersey and never had a chance to be on a national championship team.”

Not only is the bond between players strong, but the bond between coach and school is strong, Parker says that the reason this makes him especially proud is because he’s accomplished his coaching success at his alma mater. Other than the brief hiatus at Medford High, Parker hasn’t left BU since 1964. But people may not be talking nearly as much about Parker’s records if Harry Sinden hadn’t given him a week.

In 1997, the hometown Bruins were looking for a new head coach after suffering through a miserable season and missing the playoffs for the first time since 1966-67. Who better to offer it to than the man who’s arguably Boston’s most respected and famous hockey coach? And Parker was oh so close to taking that chance.

‘There was a lot of talk about it,’ Parker said. ‘I came real close to leaving, I actually changed my mind. If right off the bat I had to make a decision, I probably would have taken the job, but the longer I thought about it, it wasn’t so much that I wasn’t excited about coaching the Bruins or working for Harry Sinden, it was what I was giving up. What I was giving up more than anything else was the relationships. When I didn’t take it, Harry Sinden said, ‘I kind of knew you wouldn’t take it,’ and I said ‘why do you say that?’ He said he imagined when you walk around BU people are saying, ‘Hey, Coach how’s it goin’? That’d never happen here.’

‘And that’s one of the nice things about this job. You have here the relationships with the people and the players.’

* * *

Since Parker took over in 1973, college hockey has undergone extreme changes. Once a place where only the best players would make it to the NHL, college hockey has been producing better players in recent years, and that has increased respect for the sport at the NHL level, as guys like Drury and former BU defenseman Tom Poti and former BU forward Keith Tkachuk among many others from many different schools have gone on to successful pro careers. Now we see a BU player — sophomore defenseman Ryan Whitney most recently when selected fifth in the draft by the Pittsburgh Penguins — picked high in the first round. Now kids come to BU looking to learn from the master to have a better chance to get to the NHL. It’s a far cry from the days when Parker’s best players weren’t overly concerned with the next step in hockey.

‘There’s no question in my mind that the chance of being a great player in Hockey East and making it in the NHL is very good now,’ Parker said. ‘In 1970, if you were a great player in the old East Coast Athletic Conference, your chances were slim. When Ricky Meagher came here or when Jack O’Callahan played here, they wound up playing in the NHL for 10 years, but that wasn’t their goal. Their goal was to play college hockey. Now these guys are thinking, ‘I’m gonna be here for two years and jump to the NHL.”

While it could seem that Parker is discouraged by this trend, the truth is somewhere in between. Parker has no problems with players who are ready to jump straight into the NHL leaving. In the cases of recent guys like Mike Grier, now of the Washington Capitals, and Tom Poti, now of the New York Rangers, he encourages it, because there’s nothing more he can teach them from a hockey standpoint. But if a guy’s going to have to rough it in the American Hockey League for a few years before making it to the NHL, Parker is dead set against him leaving early. His willingness to put the player before the program is what gives Parker credibility to a 19-year-old kid trying to decide his future.

‘Most of them pay attention, most of them are looking for input, and they know they can get it from their coach, and they respect our opinions because they know we’ve told guys to leave,’ Parker said. ‘They know we’re not just trying to keep them so we can win another hockey game here. Because what’s best for a Tom Poti in the long run is best for BU. If Tom Poti leaves after his sophomore year and goes to the NHL and is on the All-Rookie Team, that is great for our program and great for him. If Tom Poti leaves after his sophomore year and doesn’t make it for six years, that’s no good for us, and that’s no good for him either, so we want to have the best decision for both of us.’

Parker has learned how to deal with players leaving Babcock Street early, and luckily for all involved with the hockey program, Parker’s learned how to deal with the players of today who come into college a lot more ‘fragile’ than their predecessors.

‘They’re almost like egomaniacs with inferiority complexes,’ Parker says of his latest generation. ”I’m a fifth round pick, I’m supposed to be a good player, I can do this, I can do that, I hope I’m as good as they tell me I am. I wonder if I’m as good as I’m supposed to be.’ No matter how good the guy is, it’s an unbelievable fragility that has changed drastically. When I first started coaching I could get in their face, I could tell ’em this I could tell ’em that, it’d make them just grit a little harder and go all out. That’s the biggest change in coaching. Whether they’re athletes or non-athletes, 14-year-olds are different than they were 21 years ago, and 21-year-old hockey players are different.’

Parker is that rare treasure that can only exist with a college program. A coach who can leave the legacy that Jack Parker has in 30 years at BU cannot be as legendary as a pro coach, because Parker shapes the way kids plays hockey, and in the truest sense of the cliché, changes boys into men at BU. The King of the Beanpot, which he has won 19 times, more than any other person (‘Been there longer than anyone else,’ Parker wryly noted when his success in the ‘Pot was noted), Jack Parker will forever be remembered as the greatest coach at Boston University.

So the fans should appreciate Somerville Jack as his career enters what is perhaps the homestretch. As he says, ‘I’m not gonna do it for 40 years.’

Take notice of the enthusiasm some say he’s lost. And don’t listen to it. Parker still has that fire, but after 30 years of teaching, he’s also learned just a little bit himself.

‘Over the period of years you get humbled a lot,’ Parker said. ‘You’ve gotta make sure you don’t get humiliated. There’s a big difference between those two, but you do get humbled a lot and after a while you’re not quite as sure that you know everything. You’re not quite as sure there’s only one way to do it, and I think that’s good, it opens your mind up to what other possibilities are.’