The Asterisked Championship?

It should be no surprise that if someone mentions Sault Ste. Marie, the first hockey team that comes to mind is the OHL's Soo Greyhounds. Based on their longevity in the city, that's completely understandable, but there is another team that plays in Sault Ste. Marie despite them being in another country. As you may know, Sault Ste. Marie straddles the Canada-US border, so half of the city resides in Michigan rather than Ontario. That's where the NCAA's Lake Superior State University Lakers call home, and the Lakers have put their name on the hockey map a few times thanks to winning the NCAA National Men's Hockey Championship!

From their website, the Lakers play in Taffy Abel Arena, a 4000-seat rink with a 200x85-foot ice surface. Taffy Abel was established in 1976, and, in 1995, the arena was renovated to its current size which happened after Laker Hockey won their fifth National Championship. It was named after American ice hockey player Clarence "Taffy" Abel who was born in Sault Ste. Marie. It is the only on-campus hockey arena in the United States which has a seating capacity greater than the enrollment of the school for which it's used, and the arena serves a number of purposes in the community including hosting youth hockey games and practices, community events, and summer camps.

You may have noticed that little detail above where it says "fifth National Championship". That is factual as the Lakers own the 1972 and 1974 NAIA championships along with the 1988, 1992, and 1994 NCAA championships. There is also an unofficial asterisk on that total, however, because the 1993 NCAA Men's Hockey Championship apparently ended prematurely thanks to some video footage that should have been reviewed long ago. Could Lake Superior State have been a three-peat champion in NCAA's men's hockey?

Apparently, the answer is yes. According to Flo Hockey's Tim Rappleye, Lake Superior State University head coach Jeff Jackson was given a plaque following the 1993 NCAA championship game that reads, "1993 NCAA Division I Men's Ice Hockey Championships National Champion". The only problem with that plaque is that the Maine Black Bears are the 1993 NCAA champions based on all historical records. So how did Jackson end up with this plaque from the NCAA if Maine has the trophy?

In Rappleye's article, he frames the final moments of the game where a "point-blank scoring chance by Lake State junior Sean Tallaire with 50 seconds remaining appeared to bank off the crossbar" in a documentary called "Out of the Woods". Let's run that clip here.

I have watched this clip over and over again, and I still can't figure out if Tallaire scores on that move to the front of the net while goaltender Garth Snow scrambled in the crease. Yes, the puck goes up and looks like it hit the crossbar, but I can't tell if it pinged off the iron or went under the bar and into the net.

In 1993, the NCAA had yet to institute video review, so the option to go to the film wasn't there. The official's call on the ice would be the only call that the NCAA would accept, and the lone referee on the ice ruled that the puck had gone off the crossbar. If you watch the clip again, the referee isn't even in the picture or standing near the net to make an accurate call, so the 5-4 finish would stand and Maine would be crowned the 1993 champion.

Except we still have that plaque that makes no sense if Maine won.

What we need is another angle or a more definitive look at the goal. I went hunting for more evidence, and I discovered that a YouTube user named TJ Rogers had uploaded the highlights from this game. In that 26-minute highlight package is this moment from a number of different angles. Let's take a look at this moment again with different angles included as we try to figure out if Tallaire actually scored. Two different looks and a third replay at the same broadcast angle while slowed down doesn't give us anything definitive except that the puck appears to disappear for fractions of a second in that final replay under the bar as opposed to ricocheting off the iron. To be fair, I have never seen netting cause a bounce-back like that, so the puck may have hit the back crossbar and come back out. Again, the quality of the replay doesn't have enough definition to say that it happened like that, but it seems that it could be plausible.

Jeff Jackson recalls the moment still, telling Rappleye, "I remember Sean came back to the bench and said, 'That puck was in, Coach!'"

Perhaps this is simply a moment of wanting to believe that Tallaire scored, but Jackson claims he has other evidence. He told Rappleye, "Every time I watched the clip, I noticed something was weird, so I kept on rewinding it back on the old VHS systems and trying to determine. You couldn't see the puck go in the net. But what I did see was the skate lace tying down the water bottle on the top of the net, flying in the air. That's when I knew the puck had gone in."

This is the part that becomes hard to explain because Jackson is right in noticing the skate lace move. If you watch the angle from behind the net, you can see the skate lace on top of the net that was used to tie the water bottle down securely move as the puck appears to either hit the bar or go in the net. In the video above, it's just to the left of the water bottle, and its position clearly changes. Is that enough proof to change the outcome? I'd say no, but it seems to lend credence to the idea that Tallaire did score.

Rappleye added this nugget in his article as well.

"Unlike the low-resolution analog footage that Jackson was using to edit his piece, a clean tape, one generation removed from the original footage, was rescued from ESPN's tape truck an hour after their championship telecast went off the air. Four replay angles of Tallaire's tying goal, images that were never broadcast, were dubbed off onto a digital cassette, a relic that was last seen buried in the NHL's video archives.

"The cassette got into the hands of a college hockey producer in November of 1993 and was employed during an intermission feature during a live broadcast of a Lake Superior/Vermont clash from Burlington, Vermont. It was there that the end-zone camera angle of Tallaire's shot finally made air on the now defunct Prime Network, rolled in slo-mo, allowing the viewers to see incontrovertible evidence: the 1993 NCAA championship game—the game that would have secured Lake Superior's bid for a historic three-peat—had been tied up in the final minute."

By this measure, it seems that Tallaire did indeed score on that shot, and it should have sent the 1993 NCAA Men's Hockey Championship towards overtime with Maine and Lake Superior State tied 5-5. Of course, that video would need to be seen and verified to become the smoking gun in this dispute, so Maine remains as the rightful winner of the 1993 NCAA Men's Hockey Championship until that time.

I won't deny that Lake Superior State has a case to be made, but it makes one appreciate the high-definition reviews we get in hockey today that much more. I can't explain why the NCAA gave that championship plaque to Lake Superior State when it seems that there is no definitive evidence to change the results, but perhaps the NCAA saw the same Prime Network video that was aired in November 1993.

I'm not suggesting that anyone change history at this time, but this may be one of those moments that will be lost to time if that Prime Network video never surfaces. The Maine Black Bears will always be the 1993 NCAA Men's Hockey Champions, but it seems clear that the Lake Superior State Lakers have a valid reason to contest that result. Until the evidence is found, though, Lake Superior State will have to be content with their championship plaque that isn't an NCAA Men's Hockey Championship trophy.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!