Boston University was in the news earlier this week when four players, senior captain Brian McGuirk, seniors Bryan Ewing and Dan McGoff, and junior Brandon Yip, were “suspended indefinitely” for violating a team rule.
Following tonight’s 3-2 win over the US Under-18 team, Parker responded to a question from USCHO during the press conference regarding why the suspensions were indefinite and what would need to happen before their length was known.
“I made it indefinite because I wanted to find out how much was going on as far as breaking the rules was concerned,” Parker replied. “I’m pretty satisfied I know what’s going on, so I’ll make my decision early next week about when they’ll be back, and I’ll tell them before I tell anyone else.”
In light of McGuirk being replaced by Peter MacArthur as captain, an apparently permanent move, with Ryan Weston and Matt Gilroy being named as alternates, Parker then fielded a question about whether the team already felt any different with MacArthur as captain.
“I have no idea,” Parker said. “I took the captain off of McGuirk because of his actions. I thought it was absolutely not the leadership you need from a captain. So he’s no longer captain; somebody’s got to be captain, and I thought the way those three guys [have been playing], especially Peter has given us a great first half and a very emotional first half, I thought he’d be a good candidate for it, and I thought he’d need some help from the assistants.”
Parker also was asked if he could recall stripping the captaincy from a player prior to now.
“I don’t ever remember doing it before,” he said. “I’ve benched captains before, but I don’t remember taking the ‘C’ off a captain’s shirt. For the most part, I’ve benched captains like the way I benched McGuirk because he wasn’t playing well. The ‘C’ came off the shirt because of a lack of leadership, or leadership the wrong way, I guess.”
BU has just one game against Dartmouth on Thursday before a 17-day layoff, with finals and Christmas coming up. With Brian Strait and Colin Wilson slated to miss the December 30 and January 5 games due to being selected for the World Junior Championships, at least some of the suspended players would need to be back in action by then in order to give the team a full complement of 18 skaters.
