Some of them hadn’t seen each other since the thrilling come-from-behind 5-4 victory over Lake Superior State in Milwaukee on April 3, 1993, which supplied the University of Maine with its first of two NCAA men’s hockey championships.
The Black Bears finished a remarkable 42-1-2. All of the NCAA champions since 1993 have lost at least six games that season.
On Friday night, the team got together at the Black Bear Inn in Orono, where they were inducted into the University of Maine Sports Hall of Fame along with assistant coaches Grant Standbrook and Red Gendron, who were on the staff of the late Shawn Walsh. Gendron is now the head coach at UMaine and Standbrook has retired.
Standbrook was also one of eight individuals inducted along with Ashley Waters, Mike DeVito, Chuck Martin, Dan Rearick, Dave Thompson, Gary Thorne and Vicki Tolton.
Former defenseman Chris Imes hadn’t intended to attend, but a call from Standbrook convinced him to make the trip from suburban Chicago and he is glad he did.
“Even as an adult, sometimes you need a kick in the butt,” joked Imes.
“I had an absolute blast,” said Imes, who is a teacher and one of the directors of the Chicago Blues Hockey Club. “The best thing was seeing everybody again, guys I hadn’t seen in a long time. We got to reminisce and listen to some old stories.”
In addition to the induction ceremony, the group spent time at Gendron’s house later Friday night, attended a Saturday luncheon at the Dexter Lounge in Alfond Arena and toured the facility before being introduced during the UMaine-Bryant football game later Saturday afternoon.
“It was a fantastic weekend, it really was,” said Dan Murphy, who is the head boys hockey coach at the St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire, after spending several years in the same capacity at the Taft School in Connecticut.
“Guys were giving each other a hard time like they had never been away for 24 years. My wife (Caroline) said it was like we had never left the locker room,” said Murphy.
“The way life moves, it’s so hard to stay in touch with everyone,” said Murphy. “It was great to reconnect with everyone and see how well they are doing in the next phase of their lives.”
Murphy said the “beauty of a sport like hockey is it creates a level of cohesiveness and friendship you don’t get in too many places. We all had a tremendous amount of respect for one another. You don’t find that too often. Shawn, Grant and Red created that type of environment within the group.”
The 1992-1993 team members knew their team was going to be very good. Some sensed it sooner that others.
“I knew we were going to be special at the first practice,” said former All-American and Hobey Baker Award finalist Jim Montgomery, who captained the team and coached the University of Denver to the NCAA title last season.
“We had lost Pelly (Scott Pellerin), Roby (Martin Robitaille) and Jean-Yves (Roy) but the freshman class brought a level of talent you had never seen at Maine,” said Montgomery.
That class included Paul Kariya, who won the Hobey Baker Award that season, and the Ferraro twins, Peter and Chris. All three returned to Orono last weekend.
UMaine outscored its opponents 292-108 during the championship season.
Center Kent Salfi said seeing Kariya at the first captain’s practice tipped him off.
“We had talent, leadership and depth but I knew Paul was the one who would put us over the edge,” said Salfi.
Forward Eric Fenton said the team’s camaraderie was instrumental in its success.
“Everyone was picking everyone else up all the time. There was never any negativity. If anybody got negative, it was nixed right away,” said Fenton.
“Everybody embraced their roles,” said Murphy. “Everyone did their jobs and they did them well.”
“We had guys who would kill penalties, guys who would (play the body), stay-at-home defensemen and others who would jump into the play. We all knew what we needed to do to make things work,” said winger Cal Ingraham, who scored a team-high 46 goals while playing on a line with future NHL Hall of Famer Kariya (100 points) and Montgomery (95 points).
UMaine also had two future NHL goalies in Garth Snow and Mike Dunham, which Ingraham said helped facilitate the Black Bears’ run-and-gun style.
Montgomery said the thing he was most proud of was the way they “terrorized people. The other teams knew if they weren’t ready to play, they’d lose the game in the first 10 minutes.”
UMaine didn’t lose or tie a game on the road that year.
“Going 42-1-2 was crazy,” said former defenseman Dave MacIsaac. “During the season, we didn’t think about it. But when you look back now, it was quite a feat.”
The players believe their record is safe and it won’t be duplicated.
“There’s too much parity now. Everybody is good. Everybody is in much better shape,” said Salfi.
The players were grateful to be inducted and to have the opportunity to reconnect and share a special memory with their former teammates.
“We were all fortunate to go to the University of Maine. I really believe the university did a fantastic job preparing us for our future lives,” said Murphy. “We got a great education and we became better people. We had a really good group of people.”