Sports Girl Kat’s note: Due to a number of factors, I was unable to post all of the Countdown to Senior Night pieces I had desired when I launched the series. They are no longer timely, and so will never see the light of day. However, I did receive one from past contributor Scott Martineau that will always be timely because its topic is Hobey Baker winner Matt Gilroy. Penned before the Northeast Regional, I have largely kept it untouched, not touching its timeline or adding information about the Frozen Four. He also has a unique way of storytelling, and I worried about messing that up. Martineau boasts several writing credits, and always has well researched pieces. So step back and enjoy his take on Matt Gilroy.

One of the things that you learn in Journalism 101 is that you are supposed to be objective. Truthfully, that is why most of your best journalists become columnists, because as columnists NOT ONLY are you not asked to be objective, your task is to be subjective and to weave facts and opinion to make a case. When that case is made well, you did your job if in the end your final words turn out to be a story others find compelling. That being said, when a group of us decided that we were going to do a series of commentaries: one memoir; character study, expose; or essay apiece on each of the six members of the Senior Class of BU Terriers, it was an honor to be asked to write the Senior Profile on the player that I would have requested if we were divvying up the Players by personal affinity. Matt Gilroy is a favorite of many – probably most – Terrier fans of the Boston University Ice Hockey Team Circa 2009. Still, I have reasons –personal and professional, serendipitous and deeply serious, subjective and objective – why Captain Matt Gilroy embodies both this Terrier Senior Six as a whole and yet still why Gilroy specifically represents what is so endearing and unique about this team of hockey playing Terriers in particular. I am one of many in the masses who have fallen under Matt Gilroy’s spell. That of why he is such a special Terrier and why Matt’s career at BU, although already well-chronicled, is a story so compelling that I write this piece with so much I want to share and realizing that what is exceptional about this particular assignment is it is not about Matt Gilroy The Man, nor Matt Gilroy the brother, nor is it Matt Gilroy The Hockey Star – which includes in its absolute immediacy a final pilgrimage at a final attempt to foray through the NCAA Postseason to the ultimate pinnacle destination for a College Hockey team, the Frozen Four. A trip that not a member of this special Senior Six, nor any of their teammates, has ever made as a member of a participating team This piece is to chronicle, and the only way to tell that story honestly is to explain why there are so many reasons that he should not be taking place in SENIOR NITE at Boston University at all, but they are cases that are on polar opposites of the spectrum. This piece is to chronicle what Matt Gilroy has meant while at BU and what BU has meant to Matt Gilroy. Why he is special to This Boston University team and why SENIOR NITE in particular, a night that for two very different reasons on bookends of his Boston University career not even his head coach ever anticipated that he would be participating in, and it is that story of Matt Gilroy, Captain and three time first team All Hockey East Defenseman, on which I think I can shed a little perspective.

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As previously referenced, This Special Class of 2009 Senior Terriers have never been to the Frozen four; a fact already gnawing at the seniors, but made even more bitter by the knowledge that their arch-rival program located on the outskirts of the city, Boston College, has taken three times during the first three years of these seniors time at BU. Even harder for these seniors to swallow is that during their freshman campaign they owned The Eagles, went on to a perfect regular season against their Commonwealth Ave. nemesis and even beat them in the HE tourney to secure the number one seed for The Terriers. And so when the Terriers cruised through their first round Game against University of Nebraska-Omaha that season and BC beat a Miami team they were on a collision course which seems to happen to our conference more than any other. We were riding a similar streak to the one that we went on when Millan set the career record for winning percentage to start an NCAA Career with, breaking the record of former BU great and current women’s coach Brian Durocher. And yet we came out flat despite a class full of senior leadership and got crushed by a team that made its first of three straight trips to the final four. So not only was our Senior Six’s closest taste to the Frozen Four only 60 minutes from happening, it was an embarrassing loss to our arch rival BC that ultimately ended that season prematurely. Their sophomore seasons, again they.had high expectations, and they get to the NCAA tourney and they are thrown in against Michigan State, who would win the NCAA title. And to make matters just that more sour, BC has another trip to the Frozen Four themselves, bowing in the semis. The seniors NOT only were having a tough time of it in the NCAAs, but their arch-rival, who to this point still had not taken a Beanpot from The 2009 senior six, had twice been to the Frozen Four. And while BU preferred to look at the Glass as half-full, according to Gilroy: “Growing up in New York, I learned of the Beanpot at a pretty early age when I knew my goal was to play college hockey. But it wasn’t until my season playing EJHL in Massachusetts with the hopes of getting to BU that I first realized the magnitude of this special Trophy.” Later in the that interview, Gilroy said, “So two seasons in, although our postseasons had ended badly, one thing we could say is that we were two for two in Beanpot Trophies, and we knew that the good classes at BU would always seem to take at least half, some of the Greatest of All Time had taken three, and the famous Drury Class had been the standard-bearer at four-for-four. We still had some attainable goals to make our four years at BU memorable, and having not lost a Beanpot at the midpoint was keeping one of them very much alive.” Junior year was tough for Matt and the rest of his class, not to mention the class above him for a variety of reasons. An off campus incident left the team Captain-less, however briefly, as the sole Captain of the team had to be disciplined. To fill the void, Coach Parker asked three veteran members of the team to serve as interim Captains. Not surprisingly, Matt Gilroy was one of the three, and he was the only one that was not a member of the 2008 Senior Class to be asked. That team, despite having an abundance of talent, got off to a very slow start in its non-conference schedule, meaning that they would have to have a remarkable campaign in Hockey East to have any chance at even an invitation to the dance. It didn’t happen. To rub salt in that wound this class of 2009 seniors relinquished their Beanpot Trophy to The BC Eagles for the first (and only time) as Terriers to their rivals from a few miles west on the Green Line. BU finished the regular season at 13 in the PWR and knew that more than likely if they were to make it to The Road to the Frozen Four their ONLY course would be a Hockey East Tournament Title, which comes with an automatic bid. They took care of Lowell in the quarters, but a savvy UVM squad took advantage of the one glaring weakness of the 2008 Terrier Team, and scored 3 goals in only 16 chances en route to eliminating the Terriers from HE play, and BU missed the tournament by being one slot in the PWR on the outside looking in. And the coup de gras of insults is that while BU went home, BC went on to the magical triple: The Beanpot, The Hockey East Tournaent, and a win in the Frozen Four Final game over Notre Dame to capture the National Title.

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As a class, Saturday’s regional opening game versus The Ohio State University is the beginning of a final quest that for four years has eluded these seniors who want more than just to reach the pinnacle of College Hockey, The Frozen Four, they hope that Saturday is part of the proof that Matt made the right decision when he decided that there were goals he had left in college hockey when he came back for his senior year, and not to be greedy but if he was going to lay them on the table, his ultimate goal as a BU Terrier returning for his senior year would be not just to reach the summit, The Frozen Four, but to culminate that journey with a National Title for This special group of Seniors. Anything short would not be a failure, for the team is a perfect five for five in achieving the goals that the Seniors helped spell out that by even the most stringent measures one would think that even an extraordinary team would be thrilled to capture any combination of these in a single season. To be on the cusp of six for six for this Terrier Squad IS NOT theatre of the absurd: In fact, it is one of the reasons (although not the main one) that Gilroy decided to return for his senior season.

1) The Ice Breaker Invitational: As you will see in Goal #2, a Host team usually schedules itself a nice warm-up skate in the first round of a tournament it is hosting, So who did BU give itself as a warm-up for the then eleventh ranked Michigan State Spartans in their semi-final game: The #5 University of North Dakota Fighting Sioux. A slow start is what ultimately kept BU from being invited to the Party last season, and they certainly did not want to make the same mistake twice. They dismantled UND on their way to an easy win over Sparta in the finals: CHECK

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2) The Denver Cup: A very hard tournament for a road team to win, as it is usually set up not unlike the Midwest Bracket is set up for the Irish to have only one formidable for on their way to Washington D.C., in The NCAAs this season: A cupcake for the Hosting Denver team in The Semis and Two Powerhouses to beat each other silly in the opposite game: Not this year, as it took a shootout for Denver to even get by a very game Holy Cross Team in Round one, and even missing with The Terriers missing two of their brightest stars to the WJCs, and in a tourney so set up for Denver to capture The Cup that for sixteen years coming into this season, Denver skated with the hardware afterwards victorious on thirteen occasions. BU made sure to keep that number at an unlucky (for Denver, that is) thirteen: CHECK

As an aside, for good measure Matt Gilroy Won The MVP of the Denver Cup.

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3) The Beanpot: After lending it to their Green line rivals for safe keeping for a year, BU came back from a two goal deficit in the Semis against a Harvard, and then played a resolute and veteran Northeastern Squad that had toyed with Boston College in their semi-final for a very exciting final game; a victory most memorable for its special teams play that ultimately allowed BU to score several short-handed goals and take its 29th of 57 Beanpots… Think of that for a second. Boston University Terriers – 29 times they have won The Beanpot. Harvard, Northeastern, and Boston College COMBINED – 28. We had been on the verge of breaking that fifty percent mark for a while, and it is fitting that it finally happened when this class took a third Trophy in its fourth trip to this most special of annual tournaments: CHECK

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4) The Hockey East Regular Season Title: Very well chronicled elsewhere, but suffice it to say Northeastern did not make it easy on this Boston University Team to even have the chance to play for this title. Despite coming to within a point of the Huskies in the standings in taking three of four on a crazy streak in which they only lost one game between thanksgiving and the end of the Regular Season, Northeastern almost played the role of front-runner to perfection, including skating to two draws on back to back nights in packed houses at Agganis and Matthews, Northeastern than had the considerably tougher schedule for their final four regular season games, in UMASS-Lowell and Boston College in comparison to BU having UMASS (Amherst) and last place Providence.

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The final weekend, BU beats Providence at Providence and Northeastern wins a very hard fought game at Matthews on Friday Night. Saturday, one game left apiece, and Northeastern finally opened the door a crack by losing to Boston College at The Heights. In a rare Sunday game closing the Hockey East Season as all eight other squads had finished the previous night, knowing a tie gets BU a share of the Banner (though on technicality they would be a number one seed for the conference tourney), a win grabs the title outright. Coach gives Rollie the start, the team plays solid if uninspired hockey but get the two points needed to win the title outright. In a display typical of what makes Gilroy so special, the final whistle blew and the entire team skated to surround the goalie and congratulate him on a job well done. The whole team, that is, sans Matt, who takes one stride towards his own netminder, and immediately does a turnabout to skate to the striped shirts and find the one with the puck. This puck was not for Matt or to commemorate the game that won the Hockey East Regular Season, this puck was for Backup goaltender turned Sunday Starter Grant Rollheiser, as it occurred to Matt that this was Grant’s first Shutout as a Terrier goalie, and tradition dictates that the goalie get presented with the Puck for HIS trophy case upon achieving his first. Even after a game that helped the seniors and the team to achieve a now ridiculous four out of four goals and shortly before everyone got in the orderly dog pile that amazingly always emerges with everyone crammed in for the championship photo to be taken, Matt had the presence of mind to secure the puck which he shortly thereafter presented to his freshman back-up goalie. CHECK

5) The Hockey East Tournament Championship: As quickly as possible, let’s just say that all four of the home and higher seeded teams learned how hard it is to end another team’s season when you know you are going to be invited to the NCAAs in a fortnight regardless. As such, The defending National Champion Eagles of BC entered as a sixth seed and won two games with relative ease at The Whittemore against UNH. Albeit much more closely contested, the outcome was the same in Lowell securing a semi-final birth as a five seed who went into The Gut and beat UVM in straight games. Northeastern got the wake up call it needed in losing its game one at home as a two seed (with Matthews emerging this season as one of the Toughest and Best Home Ice Advantage after years of empty seats), but then won two straight against UMASS. BU, meanwhile, looked like they were playing a Maine team straight out of the 90’s and the Sean Walsh Era when BU was outplayed as a unit but managed to steal Game 1, in Game 2 for the first time all season BU relinquished a 2 goal lead and lost embarrassingly to Maine in a game where they could not kill a penalty as Maine scored four power play goals. Going into game three, Coach Parker said the following: “One of the goals our senior class set before the season is that they wanted to win The Hockey East Tournament Title. We got embarrassed tonight. The only way we get the chance to achieve the goal of winning The Hockey Ease Tourney is to beat a Maine team tomorrow night that frankly should be on the bus going home right now, but we stole game one. We have met every challenge we’ve had this season, so I have every reason to believe that this team, led by our Captains and our Seniors, will find a way to get it done tomorrow night. This team has a chance to be one of the All Time Special BU teams, and winning The Hockey East Tourney is one of the things that has to happen in order for this team to be one of the all time greats… I gotta think it is gonna happen.” Game 3 BU despite still not taking care of its Penalty Kill issues responded to the Coach’s challenge and wins 6-3 in a relatively easy third game. Commenting after the game, Coach said: “We went after it pretty good…We played sharp…Matt Gilroy played extremely well….Overall it was the type of game I was glad we could play…. We hadn’t been tested and we weren’t up for the test until tonight, and I am glad to see we responded.”

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And so BU and NU, each in three, moved to the semis, with BU taking out its first wounded animal in a Maine Black Bear team, a pattern that you see emerge over the rest of the tournament where BU is playing to have a chance at the fifth on its list of goals, with not only a NCAA bid but The Top Seed in the Tournament already secured, and in the semis and the finals, they would face a defending National Champion and a team that was playing arguably as well if not better than any HE team down the stretch, and BU ultimately found a way, improbable as it was going a man down and thus overusing everybody in the semis to end another Wounded Animal’s Season, this time their arch-rival and 2008 National Champion Boston College Eagles, and with the lines juggled from a minute into that game due to a game misconduct taken by Senior Brandon Yip, the two teams uncharacteristically played almost two complete periods of scoreless hockey before BC took a 1-0 lead heading into the locker rooms. With the lines scrambled and the players winded, BU nevertheless halfway into the third period found a way to net one…two…three goals on their way to what wound up being a 3-2 victory. Second wounded animal’s Season Ended, and arch-rival AND defending National Champion BC was now officially done with their campaign and could come back into BU’s line of fire no more as their National Championship Season ended at the hands of The Terriers. In a final that was a surprise to very few who had watched Lowell of late, but still it took late game heroics by Lowell to defeat Northeastern to get there, a tired BU squad playing on less than 20 hours turnaround was playing the trendy pick for The Tourney Title: The rested Lowell River Hawks whose continuation of their season was contingent upon winning the title game. A tired BU team’s best motivation was the list of goals for the seniors, and a win would make it five for five. Brandon Yip scored the only goal of a heated and physical game that was one by some spectacular goaltending of Kieran Millan, who to no-one’s surprise was named the Hockey East Tourney MVP: CHECK

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With the puck dropping on the tournament in BU’s region on Saturday, they are on their way to goal number six. Some of the rules of the PWR did not make it easy in terms of brackets, as most would argue that BU is in either the toughest bracket or the 2nd toughest, but certainly they were not rewarded with a smooth two games to get them to play for the national title. But neither Coach nor Matt have done any complaining. Due to the fact that the CCHA placed two #1 seeds and two #4 seeds, if following precedent in terms of priority was to hold that meant that BU could not be rewarded for the body of work it did during the season by being given Bemidji State. No offense to Bemidji, who are a serviceable team, but they are a full ten slots lower in the PWR than the fifteenth seed, but when asked about it, Matt sounded almost whimsical: ”I didn’t come back for my senior season to be handed a trophy (although he has been handed quite a few, most recently The Walter Brown Award, on Wednesday night). We are playing an Ohio State team that we don’t know much about, but we do know they are one of only three teams on the season to beat Notre Dame, who the voters have as the Top Team in the country. If we get through that, we get the winner of the Host team, a Hockey East Team that we know well, and North Dakota, a team that has been to the Frozen Four every year going back to my year in juniors before joining BU…That, to me, is the road to the Frozen Four nobody can argue with.”

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And here is where the irony and the serendipity come into play as to what makes Matt Gilroy such a special player to me. In that statement about North Dakota having been at the last four Frozen Fours, going back to his final year in Juniors, you might think this kid came up through the Junior Development system which has replaced The Catholic Memorials and The other Catholics, The St. Sebastian’s and The Thayer Academies, along with a handful of public programs such as Reading and Wrentham, that for years had been the lifeblood as the feeders of talent pool to Hockey East. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. He grew up, or should I say he grew upwards, but not very high, while attending St. Mary’s High School in Manhasset, NY. He had a storied high school lacrosse, and, not surprisingly, a particularly impressive high school hockey career in Long Island. He led his St. Mary’s teams to consecutive state championships, Captaining the team as both a junior in 2002 and a senior in 2003 as it won its two state titles. He was named the team MVP for his senior year as well as earning the title of Athlete of the Year at St. Mary’s High School when he graduated in 2003. He was a four year Varsity Ice Hockey Letter winner, as well. Oh yeah, as his father is quick to remind interviewers who seem perplexed that he was not getting any offers from colleges. He was also five foot seven (Matt claims five-eight), and not quite 170 pounds. He gave it some thought, and decided that he could increase his chances if he played a season in the ECHL. He played a stint for Apple Core in the 2003-4 season, and he had an opportunity open up for him to go play for the Walpole Jr. Stars for 2004-5, the original Juggernaut of the ECHL. Think The Jersey Hitmen and the New Hampshire Monarchs combined AND that is about how dominant The Walpole Stars were for about a decade from the mid nineties until folding after Matt’s final season with them in 2004-5.

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When Matt was playing his second season in the EJHL, and his first as a Walpole Jr. Star, I came to take an immediate interest in Matt because second only to my loyalty to the Boston University Terriers in my heart, was my loyalty as an almost decade long fan of the Walpole Jr. Stars. To keep this from becoming a novel, suffice it to say that I had a older brother/ father figure in my High School’s Hockey Coach at Holliston High, and I became an older brother/ father figure type in his son’s life as I almost never saw the ice except for to make sure all the pucks were picked up after practice and back in our giant bucket. That gave me huge amounts of time to bond with his son, and less than a decade later his son, after a year of publics as an eighth-grader playing Varsity Hockey and setting single season scoring records, joined the Walpole Jr. Stars for the 1997 season, where he won consecutive scoring titles and back-to-back-to-back league MVP’s, having wrapped up an offer from Sean Walsh to join the Maine Black Bears for the year of his HHS graduating class’s freshman years of college elsewhere. I followed the Walpole Stars to every home game and probably as many road games as I could and still stay employed, but they became a second passion, run at that time by former Maine Black Bear and brother of former BU and Natick hockey player, Danny LaCouture; with his brother Dave running the Jr. Stars. And longer after they were still a the powerhouse of the league, based in large part to the fact that I had become invested as a fan and its proximity to my house, I stayed true to my allegiance and fandom of The Walpole Stars, although not quite as rabid,

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I had heard that a kid had joined the Jr. Stars in 2004-5 after a solid campaign for Apple Core, a team that had always been a middle of the pack EJHL squad. When talking to Peggy Gilroy, Matt’s mom, about Matt’s decision to leave the Apple Core (conveniently located for a Long Island family) and instead play for the Stars. I asked her why he chose to do so? “Because he had the opportunity,” she told me while trying to bring her dogs in from a howling moon the other night. “He had continued to grow, was now six feet and still growing, and The Stars said they wanted him to play for them.” Playing for the stars meant an exponential increase in the number of scouts who would see him, and I approached him at an EJHL game when I heard that he was planning on walking on at BU on a night that I was in attendance because of a ceremony they were having honoring Mantenuto. Matt has no recollection of the initial meeting ever taking place. I had the following explained to me by Peggy, “Matt had some discussions with Maine, but they were looking for a defenseman. Union seemed to like him as a winger, but nothing had been offered. And so when Coach Bavis invited him to try to walk on at BU, offering no aide, and telling him that he would spend his first season seeing if he was good enough to skate with the team, and there was a good chance based on numbers that those minutes as a practice walk-on player would be spent at defense. At the time, in his initial conversation with Matt when he walked into the coach’s office to introduce himself, Coach Parker actually tried to dissuade Matt from coming. In a moment of candor Parker said of the lanky older than most freshman, “I didn’t want to waste the kids time.” But Matt persisted and when Coach said they needed a defensemen, Matt jumped at the opportunity. “Coach, I play defense!” In explaining the less than forthright truthfulness of his comment, Gilroy later went on to say, “I learned hockey from my brothers, and I was taught if you could skate and you could handle a stick you were a hockey player. Forward. Defense. These are just limitations, I was a hockey player and if the team needed a defenseman I was gonna do everything I could do to be that defenseman.” A full three games into his learning year, Coach called Matt into his office and told him he would be dressing on defense starting the next game. It is a spot he never relinquished. So much for a learning year.

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And at the other end of the spectrum, there was such unanimity among scouts and coaches alike that Matt was ready for the pro game after his junior year they initially didn’t include him in the balloting for the Captaincy for 2009. There was unanimity among everyone, that is, except Matt and his family. Despite being offered NHL contracts by 23 teams, Matt sat down with his parents and made a list of plusses and minuses of whether or not to return to BU. Says Matt, “When we put it on paper, some of the reasons I came back to BU: To play with my brother, to get a Chance to Captain what I knew was gonna be a special team; to graduate as a member of the same six I came in with. Those were all reasons why. That and I still had goals to achieve as a Collegiate, as a Terrier, that we did not get to achieve in my first three years at the school. I thought this team had as much talent and could go as far as (we) The Seniors, The Captains, and the two extraordinary classes behind me could take us. I thought no doubt that we could make it all the way.” His brother Kevin, a freshman, who came to BU via The South Shore Kings – which really in geography only is the only thing that links them to the Walpole Stars, but they are listed as a previous incarnation on the League’s web page: “I told Matt that I wanted to play for BU and Matt assured me that if I chose BU he would come back for his senior year. Matt and I had never had the chance to play on the same team together.”

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Matt Gilroy turned down millions to come and finish what he felt was unfinished business at a school that didn’t want him in the first place, In doing a stand up for a local cable station, Matt’s dad Frank was explaining to the interviewer that as a freshman, Coach discouraged Matt from coming to BU because he didn’t want Matt to waste his money or his time. At the end of his junior campaign, Coach told Matt that while he would love to have him back, he really felt he should move on to the NHL and financial security. As Frank is telling this to the reporter, Coach Parker running down a stairwell hears the discussion and says: ”Thank God Matt never listens to his coaches!” and laughs as he disappears down the corridor.

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By Scott C. Martineau

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TWITTER AT SCOTTCMARTINEAU

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View Original Post at sportsgirlkat.com

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