My brother and I met Al Pike at the motel where we staying in the outskirts of St Paul for the 2002 FF at Exel Center. My mom clipped Al’s articles from the hard copy Foster’s for me back in the day. I always thought that Al was an honest writer and never pulled any punches.
IIRC I was introduced to Pike once or twice in larger groups by some of his Fosters' colleagues who I was very close with. One was actually the motorsports writer for Fosters, which was huge at the time ('90's), and he had center ice season tickets at The Whitt from Day One, plus was a member of the Friends, with all the bells and whistles of that membership. He posted on here quite often, and we would often take road trips together to the places where it was too far to drag my still-too-young-at-the-time kids (including MSP in 2002, and Buffalo the next year). We shared an interest in offbeat adventures, and on the MSP trip after UNH had gotten shellacked by UMaine, we spent the off day in between first at the Mall of America, and then based on a tribal info booth located there, we hunted down a remote casino further out in the hinterlands that looked like the Seventh Gate to He11. I think I wrote a WIS travelogue about that experience on here before leaving for the Excel Arena for Saturday's Finals.
Those were the days, my friend/we thought they'd never end, etc. (sigh).
My Fosters pal was one of the first on our block to openly question Umile's ability to "win the big one", and for awhile it looked like he might be wrong, when UNH seemed to be unavoidably close circa 2002/2003 ... but sadly he was proven right, and he eventually dragged me to his side of the argument when the slow backslide was about halfway through the 2003-2013 decade. He would mine information from time to time with parents of the UNH players, when some of them would sneak out to the smoking section down at the far right end of the arena between periods, and he would almost always come back with some interesting inside info on something that happened behind the scenes, or at practice that week, that was not for publication (we handled posting it with kid gloves, to protect sources, as you can imagine).
He eventually tired of the hopelessness of the end stage Umile Era, and gave up his season tickets when he retired, promising he would never return to The Whitt until Umile was gone. As you can imagine, he was hardly filled with confidence with the "Long Goodbye" handoff to Souza, and he probably detested Blue Skies nearly as much as I did/still do. His health was failing too, and I don't think he ever did get back to The Whitt, which is something that still infuriates me when I think about him, and those of his generation, who loved UNH Hockey so much, and did not quite get to the Promised Land (although back-to-back HEA Titles plus FF trips in 2002/2003 were a highlight). He passed a few years ago, before the virus silliness, so I suppose that was a "break" he didn't get to experience that crap. One of his sons keeps in touch periodically, and regrettably was pretty much accused of being a fake on here a year or two ago when some (former) poster was thinking I was behind any unfamiliar poster(s) who might emerge and try to interact with me. That's the closest I ever came to leaving this board.
Anyway, to round back to your initial point, I can't claim Pike to have been a source of mine, or even a (known?) acquaintance, but my pal was a big supporter of his, and always said you could trust what Al wrote. He definitely took a "both sides" approach to this article (the one Darius located) and played it straight down the line, even raising the Herrion situation as a potential precedent on what to expect. So kudos to Al, it's nice to see fresh relevant content with actual NEWS on UNH Hockey, and not just some copy and paste PR release.
