What If: Tempered Temper

* April 1989: Mike Addesa resigns as coach after using a racial slur two months earlier

Martika - Toy Soldiers


From almost the first moment, and even through perhaps the greatest high in the history of the school's premiere athletic program, Mike Addesa was at odds with the powers that be in the Institute's administration. He was too brash, too presumptuous, and too focused on exploits outside of the classroom to mesh with the powers that were. Once the team backed away from the heights of a national championship and fell from grace, the sharks were circling.

The excuse the school was looking for came in February of 1989, late in a season in which the Engineers, much as they had the previous year, took a promising start and ground to a very disappointing end. Following a 2-0 win over Brown in Troy on February 3 - a win, it would turn out, that would be the last of the season for RPI and the final win of his tenure - Addesa berated the team for a lack of seriousness on the bench, including senior Graeme Townshend, who had scored the game's winning goal. Townshend, a Jamaican-Canadian and one of two black players on the team, had been trying to get his teammates focused on the game and had words on the bench with Bruce Coles, the other black player.

Addesa, as was his usual, sought to get his team fired up. Never one to mince words, he certainly went more than a bit too far in this instance, lumping Townshend in with the rest of the team to try to evince the "us vs. him" mentality that he was famous for as RPI's bench boss. Townshend recalled Addesa saying, "What I saw between you and [Coles] really made me sick to my stomach. If you don't stop acting like a n*****, I'll start treating you like one."

Townshend later confronted Addesa in private, asking him not to use the word around him any more, but Townshend recalled Addesa reasserting himself in that conversation. Eventually, word got out of the locker room about the incident, the newspapers caught wind, and a major controversy was underway.

The program had fallen almost as quickly as it rose under Addesa. Since going 35-2-1 and winning the national championship, the Engineers had been on the decline basically every season since. 1986 was still a 20-win season for RPI, but 1989 had represented a third consecutive losing season at 12-17-3 as RPI glided to an eighth-place finish in the ECAC, losing to the likes of Dartmouth and Army down the stretch and just barely qualifying for the eight-team playoff for the third straight season.

There were plenty of people in the RPI administration who were ready to be rid of Addesa from the moment he stepped on campus and successfully lobbied for athletic scholarships. But despite his string of losing seasons, the national championship four years prior and the support that came from alumni because of it made getting rid of him practically impossible - they couldn't just can him without a good reason, or there would certainly be repercussions from upset boosters and alums.

In that light, the locker room incident was practically a godsend for the administration. Controversy flared up in the local media - the truth was, a lot of local sports writers were no fan of his either, since his caustic personality and black and white mentality alienated them. Minority student groups rallied on campus for Addesa's dismissal.

At the time, Townshend - a physical forward who was a captain at RPI in 1988 and played in the NHL - defended Addesa, but later came to regret sticking up for his coach as he came to grips with the borderline relationship he had with his mentor.

Eventually, the pressure became overwhelming, and Addesa resigned as head coach, officially leaving the school on his own terms but in reality quitting before being fired. It served as a disappointing bookend to what had been an amazing decade in RPI hockey history.

Addesa never found another job in college hockey. He applied for the open position at Denver in 1990, but current Air Force coach Frank Serratore was given the nod. The following year, he fell short in his bid to take the reins at Northeastern, a job that went to then-Dartmouth head coach Ben Smith. The root of Addesa's struggles then manifested itself when he was asked about whether he would then apply for the newly open position in Hanover - "I don't believe in the academic index," he said, essentially declaring that he had given up on the ECAC in general before declaring the gravity of having been labeled a racist. "The RPI scam has eliminated any possibility of me coaching college hockey."

Today, separated by time from the bitterness of his term in Troy and with the grand nature of his accomplishments during that term shining brighter than the dark moments, Addesa appears to be on at least friendly terms with the Institute. He returned to campus in 2010 and spoke during the celebration of the 1985 championship team's 25th anniversary.

But what if Addesa hadn't gone too far that night in Troy? What if, instead of pushing the envelope, he'd simply shouted at the team and stormed out of the room? What would have been the result?

Again, with conjectural questions like these, it's difficult to say with certainty what could have happened, and a look around at what did happen is certainly in order. The desire of many of the powers that were at RPI to see Addesa gone would still have been hanging over things even if they were unlikely to be able to do much about it without cause.

Under new head coach Buddy Powers, RPI's fortunes improved to the tune of winning records in 1990 and 1991, and as one could expect, it was largely on the backs of players recruited by Addesa like Coles and Joe Juneau, the latter of which truly came into his own during his junior and senior seasons despite having led the team in scoring in both of his first two seasons as well.

If Addesa had been able to pull of similar results, the Institute probably would not have been rid of him until the mid-1990s at the earliest - more likely, Addesa's frustrations with RPI likely would have seen him out the door by then, though the question of who his successor would have been is dicey. Powers had been at RIT before the RPI job opened up, and he left Troy after just five seasons to coach at Bowling Green. Dan Fridgen was then hired directly from Powers' staff. If Addesa had been able to stay beyond 1989, it's likely that his replacement would have been someone else, changing RPI's fortunes in the late 1990s.

Addesa's comments on the ECAC's academic index indicate that he probably would not have been long for RPI in the 1990s anyway, regardless of the team's record or the administration's dislike of him. Given that the team's resurgence in the early-to-mid 1980s did not follow on with the team establishing itself as a national power or even a firm new power in the ECAC, it is by no means a given that a lengthened tenure from Addesa would have provided any specific boost. Meanwhile, the Powers and Fridgen-led teams of the following ten years, while some may have certainly underperformed at times, were at least very competitive for the duration of the 1990s.

Thus, while we may look back and ponder what could have been had Mike Addesa had the opportunity to build upon his successes at RPI, his departure from the program at the time it occurred may have been just what was needed to soldier forward in the right direction.

What If: Whistle Blown for Offsides

* March 1985: George Servinis scores a disputed goal to put RPI ahead 2-0 in the national championship game

Tears for Fears - Everybody Wants to Rule the World


The hard part was supposed to have been beating Bill Watson, Brett Hull, and Minnesota-Duluth. That was plenty hard, considering how long it took to get it done. But after three overtimes, John Carter finally potted the game winner to give UMD its second consecutive long-game heartbreaker and lift the Engineers to a place they hadn't been since 1954 - the national championship game.

Providence wasn't even supposed to be there. Their run was supposed to have ended against BU in Hockey East's first ever semifinals. After a 5-2 upset, it was supposed to have ended to Hockey East's first ever regular-season champions, Boston College. With a little home cooking - the neutral site for Hockey East's first tournament was the Providence Civic Center - the Friars earned the nascent league's inaugural title with a 2-1 double overtime win. Then they weren't going to survive a two-game, total goals set at CCHA champions Michigan State. They did. Surely they wouldn't survive BC a second time in the Frozen Four. Once again, an overtime winner. The Providence Friars were into the national championship game, against all odds.

Friar netminder Chris Terreri earned himself the nickname "the Extra Terreri-al" with out of this world goaltending, and he was perhaps some of the best proof you'll ever find that a team can ride a hot goaltender pretty far. But there was no doubt he was in for a real test facing down an RPI team that was one of the greatest offensive juggernauts in the history of college hockey. Three goals was a bare minimum for the Engineers in 1985.

RPI looked to be on their way to three with a power play goal just 4:29 into the contest off the stick of sophomore Neil Hernberg. The Friars then had to survive two more RPI power plays in the first period, and Terreri made 13 saves to keep the score 1-0 after one period.

Perhaps Providence's most golden opportunity to put themselves in position to tie things up came early in the second. Mark Jooris' hooking penalty 38 seconds in was compounded by a cross-checking call against captain Mike Sadeghpour, giving the Friars a two-man advantage for 32 seconds. RPI killed Jooris' penalty, but still had 25 seconds left to kill on Sadeghpour's minor when a faceoff came in the RPI end. Providence won the faceoff, but a blue line pass by Peter Taglianetti was stolen by George Servinis, who immediately went on a breakaway, faked Terreri down and put the puck into an empty net to give RPI a 2-0 lead. The picture of Servinis shooting past a splayed out Terreri is one of the most famous pictures in RPI's hockey history.

There was just one minor problem. Servinis was in a position to intercept the pass, in part, because he appeared to have skated into the faceoff circle just before the puck was dropped, which made him offside. That's not supposed to be legal, but the goal counted anyway - one wonders how the linesman who was dropping the puck missed the movement into the circle.

The rest is history - Providence provided some drama with a power play goal midway through the third period, but it was as close as they would get as Terreri put up a brilliant effort with 40 saves, stifling the RPI offense as no other goaltender had all season by allowing just two goals, but the Engineers skated away with their second national championship.

How would things have been different if Servinis' goal had been called back? Tough to say for sure. Obviously, both teams scored one legitimate goal each, but we can't calculate how the teams played differently in the second period and the first half of the third with RPI holding a 2-0 lead as opposed to a 1-0 lead. The Engineers certainly had their opportunities to add to their advantage with three more power play chances before Providence's Paul Cavallini made it 2-1, but a combination of brilliant play by Terreri and tired legs from having played a three-overtime contest the night before made for a bit of a power outage by the awesome RPI offense. The Engineers were 1-for-7 on the man advantage.

We'd like to think the 1-0 edge might have produced some added urgency for the RPI power play on those final three opportunities. The Engineers didn't face much adversity in that championship season, but when the game was tight they put things together, bouncing back from a 3-2-0 start to the season to go undefeated the rest of the way and winning overtime games against a less than stellar Brown team in Providence and against Division III Union in Schenectady (albeit a Division III team that had played for the national championship a season earlier).

Providence, remember, had plenty of time to get themselves back into the game, but could only manage the one goal thanks to RPI's outstanding defense led by Daren Puppa, Ken Hammond, and Mike Dark, not to mention some good discipline after the Sadeghpour penalty ended, as they allowed only two more power plays from there on out (including John Carter's hooking call which helped get the Friars on the board).

So maybe it's just us being homers here, but if it hadn't been George Servinis on a disputed call, we think it probably would have been someone else over the course of 35 minutes of game play that would have collected a memory for the ages.

What If: Lake Placid in March

* March 1984: Jon Casey leads North Dakota to a 9-6 series upset over home-standing RPI in the NCAA tournament

Van Halen - Jump


Something was certainly afoot in Troy in 1983, and it made the entire college hockey world stand up and take notice of RPI in ways it hadn't for at least 20 years dating back to its last NCAA tournament appearance and perhaps even 30 years dating back to Gordie Peterkin and the goal that shocked the college hockey world.

The 1983-84 Engineers were beastly. Practically able to score at will, RPI dominated scoreboards night in and night out, beatable only when held under three goals in a game (they were 1-4 in those games during the regular season, all five were one-goal games). Furthermore, they were unbeatable at home with a perfect 17-0 record at Houston Field House, winners of 23 straight in Troy dating back to a December 11, 1982 loss to Clarkson by the time the 1984 NCAA tournament began. During that run, they outscored opponents at home 177-84, averaging over seven goals per game.

So when North Dakota, runners-up to Minnesota-Duluth (in both the regular season and the tournament) in the 6-team WCHA came to Troy for the quarterfinal round of the NCAA tournament, there weren't too many giving the Fighting Sioux a fighting chance. While RPI was busy dominating all comers in the east down the stretch to the tune of 15 wins in their last 16 games on their way to the ECAC title (mostly - Clarkson proved more than game in both RPI's only loss and in the ECAC semifinal), North Dakota had limped to a 6-6-2 record in the same stretch, their final win a 5-4 "victory" in the back end of a two-game series with Duluth in the WCHA playoffs that followed an 8-1 loss that had the Bulldogs in cruise mode.

Truly, the Engineers had a date with destiny in front of what was sure to be a favorable crowd at the Frozen Four in Lake Placid. North Dakota senior Jon Casey had other plans.

With some of the greatest names ever to don the Cherry and White blasting away at him, Casey put on a display of brilliance in net that propelled North Dakota to an upset of the ECAC champions and into the Frozen Four themselves. The netminder faced a total of 93 shots in a two-game, total goal series at Houston Field House, and managed to emerge victorious on the other end. In game one, Casey allowed the Engineers four goals, but the RPI defense, frequently able to bend significantly due to the usual higher output from the offense, allowed five, giving the Fighting Sioux a one-goal edge heading into the back end of the series.

The Engineers couldn't have been overly concerned about falling out of the tournament at that point, after all, they had put together a barrage and were still just one goal down. Another similar effort the next night offensively combined with a boost defensively would surely still see them through. But as good as Casey had been on Friday night, he was even more effective on Saturday night, limiting RPI's freakish offense to only two goals, while the Sioux were able to pump in four of their own. Despite being outshot 93-52, the total score was 9-6, and it was North Dakota, on the back of an incredible performance by their goaltender (with a save percentage of .935, good by today's standards and unheard of at the time), who was off to Lake Placid, leaving the Engineers to wonder about what could have been.

Mike Addesa and some of his charges were critical of the officiating in the series (which had featured western referees), but at the end of the day, officiating can't accomplish what Casey did in net - the numbers simply don't lie.

But what if Jon Casey hadn't been Superman that weekend in March? What if the heavy favorites from that school with the funny name had gotten the job done and moved on to the Frozen Four for the first time in 20 years?

Presuming that the heavy favorites had found a way to continue their usual goal scoring ways and had gotten themselves past Casey and North Dakota, the Engineers would have been the lone eastern team in the 1984 Frozen Four at Lake Placid, which actually ended up being an all-western affair. RPI was not the only team that could have been local in Lake Placid - Clarkson, it should be noted, came within a goal of forcing a Game 2 overtime at Minnesota-Duluth. Boston University, meanwhile, did face overtime in its Game 2 while hosting Bowling Green, the odd sight of a 4-1 game going into overtime thanks to a 4-1 BU win the night before ended with a goal for the Falcons, sending the CCHA regular season champs to the Frozen Four.

But leaving everything else alone, RPI would have gone to Lake Placid with Minnesota-Duluth, Michigan State, and Bowling Green as the other three teams. North Dakota faced off with the Bulldogs, leading to the possibility that an RPI win over North Dakota would have created the classic RPI-UMD matchup that graced the 1985 tournament, just one year sooner.

The 1984 Duluth squad, as one would expect, was largely the same as the 1985 team, with one major exception - Brett Hull was still a year away from matriculating. Both teams included 1985 Hobey Baker winner Bill Watson as the top scorer, both included Norm Maciver, who went on to a long NHL career, and both featured Rick Kosti in net. The 1984 team, in place of Hull, really, had defenseman Tom Kurvers, who had won the 1984 Hobey Baker.

UMD defeated North Dakota to advance to the national championship game, but it wasn't for lack of effort by Jon Casey, who continued his amazing performance to limit a team with two eventual Hobey Baker winners to just one goal in regulation. The Bulldogs advanced in overtime, 2-1. Would RPI have done any better? It's almost impossible to know for sure. To their advantage, they would have been closer to home, but RPI did end up with a 1-3 record against WCHA teams in 1983-84 in real life, coupling the two losses to North Dakota with a split against Wisconsin in Madison. It certainly would have been a very, very good game, probably quite similar to the 1985 classic (especially since UMD went to four overtimes in the 1984 national championship).

We're probably assuming a lot by pondering further, but the Engineers would likely have been favorites against Bowling Green in the national championship had they advanced that far. The Falcons had a number of players who had long NHL careers, including Garry Galley, Dave Ellett, and Gino Cavallini, and they were coached by Jerry York, who was in search of his first national championship. They had overachieved a bit on their way to what would eventually be that first national championship.

The question really isn't whether RPI could have beaten Bowling Green here, because it presumes an answer to the previous situation. The question really is this: if RPI had won the 1984 national championship - certainly a happening that would not have been outside the realm of possibility - what would have changed?

Would the professional exodus that took place after the 1985 championship have taken place? Possibly. Daren Puppa probably would have stuck around since he'd just finished his freshman season, but would sophomore Adam Oates have stayed? Hard to say for sure, but probably just as hard to see them staying. It's certainly not a given that the Engineers would have been in a position to go back to back, especially if they'd run into a UMD team with extra motivation to beat RPI in 1985.

Outside of RPI, one wonders if Jerry York would have caught on at his alma mater in 1994 without the national championship win in his back pocket from a decade prior. That seems pretty likely, but if not, what becomes of the current Boston College dynasty? Just a ponderance.

All in all, it's hard to see exactly what RPI would have gone on to accomplish if they had lived up to expectations in the first round of the NCAA tournament, but it certainly underscores the speed with which Mike Addesa was able to build a national contender in Troy.

What If: Money in the Bank

Late 1970s: Scholarships come to RPI

The Knack - My Sharona


The program survived the turbulent 1960s, and once the 1970s began, the Engineers were back to being regularly competitive within the ECAC. Leon Abbott took over for Garry Kearns in 1969, leaving after three years with a winning record. Jim Salfi became RPI's fifth head coach of the modern era after Abbott's departure, moving to Troy from the University of Pennsylvania, which was the Ivy League's seventh program at the time.

Competitiveness was a relative thing in the 1970s, and it started slowly - the Engineers qualified for the ECAC Tournament in 1971, 1972, and 1973, but were blown out each time in the one-game quarterfinals. In 1974, they broke through with an overtime win over a UNH team considered the best in the nation (keeping the Wildcats out of the NCAA tournament in the process), but were humbled by Harvard and Cornell in the semifinals and consolation games. 1977 and 1978 brought more tournament qualifications, but no breakthroughs, not even at home against eventual league champions Boston College in 1978, the Engineers' first ever home game in the tournament (a 7-6 overtime loss).

For a side that wasn't among the beasts of the east in the 1970s, six tournament appearances in eight years was no slight feat. Only eight teams made the tournament back then, and the league was comprised of 17 programs for much of the decade. But the Engineers were surely facing a bit of a ceiling that they just couldn't break through. They couldn't get past the BUs, BCs, Cornells, and Harvards of the league, and although they'd put a serious gap between much of the rest of the league, they weren't looking likely to breach the top tier any time soon.

Looking back, it's fairly impressive that RPI was able to do what it did without having the Ivy League pedigree of Cornell and Harvard, or the big school/scholarship allure of most of the teams that eventually formed Hockey East. RPI had a solid educational background, but without the fanfare that came with being Harvard. The only thing to do was pretty obvious - athletic scholarships.

The concept of athletic scholarships had been around since 1950, but it wasn't until 1973, when the NCAA developed clear guidelines for scholarships (and the three divisions) that they became a strategic element. RPI was (and still is) a Division III school - one that did not offer athletic scholarships at all, but the hockey program was certainly incongruous with the rest of the athletic department.

The debate over athletic scholarships was simple - the Division III mentality saw them as a watering down of the educational foundation of the school, by and large, and the question at RPI was really one of philosophy over expediency.

By the time Holy Cross coach Mike Addesa arrived in Troy in 1979, the argument was pointed. Addesa looked at the situation, and made his case to the administration - the program needed scholarships to compete, and they needed them immediately. Now 25 years removed from the national championship that had placed the school on the map, the school could not draw the top Canadian talent that was flocking to Clarkson and St. Lawrence thanks to proximity, could not draw the talent that flocked to the Ivy League pedigree, and couldn't hope to compete with BC or BU on equal grounds without being able to offer financial incentive.

Addesa clashed with administration on this issue until he finally got his way. He made enemies in the process, which would lead to his downfall a decade later, but in time for the 1981-82 season, the first set of scholarship athletes arrived in Troy. They didn't know it right away, but these would become names etched in RPI history. Tim Friday. Ken Hammond. Mike Sadeghpour. Pierre Langevin. All four would eventually skate for and win RPI's second national championship in their final game in the Cherry and White.

The second scholarship class was even bigger. George Servinis. Kraig Nienhuis. Mike Dark. Mark Jooris. John Carter. And, of course, Adam Oates. An NHL-caliber goaltender in Daren Puppa arrived in 1983, and the rest is history.

The speed with which Addesa brought RPI from the middle of the ECAC to the top of the nation with the mere addition of athletic scholarships is a testament to his abilities as both a recruiter and a coach. When Adam Oates was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, he singled out Mike Addesa by name for what he'd done for his career in bringing him to Troy.

This "what if" scenario is a bit of a two-fer. What if RPI had failed to institute athletic scholarships in the early 1980s, and alternatively, what if Adam Oates had never come to RPI? The latter would have been a possibility had Oates been drafted by the Ontario Hockey League, but the confluence of scholarships and a lack of interest from major junior set into motion events that would lead to RPI's second national championship.

There is little argument that the team Addesa assembled to become one of the greatest college teams in the history of the sport would never have come together without the incentive of athletic scholarships, but the addition of Oates to the lineup in 1982 was just as vital. It helped attract additional key pieces to the Engineers for their monster seasons in 1984 and 1985.

Without scholarships, RPI likely maintains the trajectory they were on in the 1970s, and after the Hockey East split, would have probably put together a path similar to that of Dartmouth in the late 1980s and 1990s, perhaps a touch better - in the lower half of the 12-team league most years, occasionally reaching the middle of the conference but never more than that. If resistance to scholarships had continued through 2003, when the NCAA grandfathered Division III schools offering them in their Division I sports, by the time the present day rolled around, there would surely have been discussions whether moving to Atlantic Hockey, with its restrictions on scholarships, would be in the program's best interest. In all likelihood, the program would probably be more similar to that of RIT today.

If the school had instead offered scholarships later down the road, the effect probably would not have propelled them to the heights they reached during the mid-1980s - Colgate and St. Lawrence, when they began offering scholarships, did not suddenly become world beaters. The timing had to work out just perfectly for the Engineers in the early 1980s, and historically, it was the right move at the right time in order to get the right players.