By Joe Concannon, Globe Staff, 02/09/1982

Even before the siren sounded to end a wondrous Beanpot Hockey Tournament, the Boston University hockey players were starting out over the Garden boards and, for the next several minutes, the ice at one end of the building was littered with gloves and sticks and bodies, the litter of a celebration that would last well into this night.

At the opposite end of the Garden, the Boston College players just stood, stunned, in disbelief. Some simply stayed and sat on the bench, staring into space. For the fourth straight year in the championship game of Boston's parochial collegiate hockey tournament, BC had come up empty and, for the seniors, this one was almost too much to take.

This was the closing Beanpot tableau in the aftermath of a marvelous game that saw a BU team that many have written out of the ECAC Division 1 playoffs take it to a BC team that occupies the No. 3 spot in the present standings. And BU's 12th Beanpot title came on a 3-1 victory played out in the 30th edition of the tournament before a capacity Garden crowd of 14,673.

In its unraveling, it also became a night when a BU goaltender from Canton named Cleon Daskalakis skated onto the Garden ice for the very first time, took the ice for his first game against BC and, after giving up a goal to Jim
Herlihy 3:51 into the game, came up with a 40-save performance that may have been the difference between victory and defeat.

This was, as well, a game set off by the unrelenting persistence of tournament MVP Tom O'Regan of Cambridge and Matignon High. He scored the first BU goal, and set up the second by Mark Pierog that enabled BU to take a 2-1 lead out of the first period.

Then, with 4:45 remaining, O'Regan knifed his way through the slot and was perfectly positioned to lift an on-target Bruce Milton shot into the net to wrap everything up.

When you realize that Rob Davies was the only BU player to participate in a Beanpot championship game - and that was three years ago in a 4-3 win over BC - you realize how young and impressionable this BU team is. This was not something out of the Glory Days at BU; this was something out of what may someday be looked back upon as the dawning of a new era.

What this will mean to a BC team that has lost four straight Beanpot finals and must face up to its painful, recent 0-2 ECAC quarterfinal record on home ice, only time will tell. To think that a player with the considerable skills of a Billy O'Dwyer will leave BC without ever playing on a Beanpot champion is difficult to imagine.

But this was BU's night, just as it was Harvard's a year ago and Northeastern's the year before that.

"I haven't felt anything like this in my life," said BU captain Paul Fenton, who picked up the Beanpot trophy in the locker room and kissed it. "We're drinking out of this thing tonight. It's the greatest feeling. You've got to love it. We clipped the wings off the Eagles."

BC (16-7) broke in front when O'Dwyer went busting into the BU zone, fed the puck across to Herlihy at the crease, and he tipped the puck off the glove of Daskalakis.

"It takes a little wind out of your sails," said Daskalakis, who started the championship game after Bob Barich beat Harvard (5-1) in the opener last Monday. "It also makes you bear down harder."

O'Regan, who on Jan. 9 served a five-minute major in a 5-3 defeat at BC and watched as the Eagles scored twice, started out on the road to redemption when he followed up his own shot, then picked off a Pierog pass and tipped it past BC goaltender Bob O'Connor.

Pierog, one of the East's best defensive forwards who had helped BU hold off a four-on-three break 7:14 into the game, may have become the first player to score the winning goal in a Beanpot championship game while kneeling on Garden ice: he took a pass-out from O'Regan and was on his way down when he swept it through a screen at 18:22 of the first period.

"I screened O'Connor," said O'Regan. "We know he's tough to beat on your initial shot. We had to get in front for tips."

The Eagles had four power-play opportunities to one for the Terriers, whose advantage came almost gratuitously with just 11 seconds remaining.

"I'm still amazed we didn't get any power plays," said BU coach Jack Parker, whose 10-9-3 team didn't get any in that earlier defeat at BC either. "I thought we had better chances when we were in six-on-six situations. We played well offensively. The key to the game defensively is the way we killed off the four on three."

But this was still a 2-1 game with time winding down and BC desperately trying to tie it. O'Regan abruptly ended it, for all intents and purposes, when he was there to field the Milton shot.

"We just couldn't put the puck in the net," said BC coach Len Ceglarski amid the sustained silence of the BC locker room. "We had our chances. In our last two games, Billy O'Dwyer has five breakaways, five perfect chances. He doesn't score. When a kid like O'Dwyer can't score, maybe there's something to it.

"Maybe we were tight. It's going to take some doing for us to get up for our next game (Friday) with Colgate."

When some semblance of order had been restored at the BU end of the Garden ice, the BU band played the sounds of seasons past and the crowd responded with repeated chants of, "Go, BU."

Whether or not what transpired in the 30th Beanpot championship game has overtones for BU's future is subject to speculation. On this particular night, however, a Beanpot to savor was enough.