Goalie Coach Is Gera-nteed Results

The Boston University hockey team couldn’t have been playing much better as the 1997-98 season winded down. They had won six games in a row, were 26-5-2 overall and were captained by the nation’s best player.

It was a roster filled with future professionals, stocked with scholastic stars and perhaps the most skillful Boston University team of the last seven years, but Merrimack College goalie coach Mike Geragosian knew just how to stop the Icedogs.

“I got them a little fat,” Geragosian said.

A choice made by Geragosian and then-head coach Ron Anderson, Merrimack opted to start its backup goalie against BU in the final game of the regular season. The talented Terriers feasted, devouring the Warriors, 9-1.

But the team’s third seven-game winning streak of the season would be short-lived. The next weekend, Merrimack took two-of-three from BU in the Hockey East playoffs, knocking the Terriers out of the conference championship and starting a swoon that sent them home one-and-done from the NCAA tournament.

It wasn’t the first time Geragosian had foiled the Terriers. Seven years earlier he was assisting Toot Cahoon at Princeton University when he dangled his goaltending depth in front of BU head coach Jack Parker.

“It was the lowest point in BU’s history,” Geragosian said. “Princeton beat BU using three goalies, one a period, and he went out of his mind.”

Geragosian and Cahoon brought Princeton to the playoffs for the first time in 32 years that season. But after only two seasons, Geragosian had grown tired of the university-funded flights to New Jersey and chose instead to take a job at Merrimack in his hometown of North Andover.

When head coach Ron Anderson was let go in 1999, new boss Chris Serino came in and wanted some of his own people on the bench, leaving Geragosian in a position he hadn’t been in since 1978 – without a college coaching job.

But then the phone rang, and on the other end was the man whose national championship aspirations Geragosian had helped derail just a year earlier.

“Jack just randomly called me – I think ’cause I was such a thorn in his side,” Geragosian said. “One day I was sitting at home after Merrimack had a coaching change and it was Jack. I didn’t really expect it. I wasn’t really looking for a job at the time. We had just knocked BU off in the playoffs and he asked me if I was interested in coming and helping him out as one of the coaches.”

Geragosian initially told Parker, “I’ll let you know.” He quickly reconsidered his strategy, however, remembering the job opportunities with the Boston Bruins and the U.S. Women’s Olympic team that he had lost by hesitating. He told those teams he’d get back to them, but by the time he did, the jobs were filled.

“I said that to him, I hung up, and I said to myself, ‘You know what, I’m calling him right back,'” Geragosian said, with that accepting the volunteer position.

Geragosian hasn’t let too much by him throughout his life. Before he became a coach, he was a four-year starter at then-Division II Lowell Tech/University of Lowell (which would later become the University of Massachusetts at Lowell), where he was an All-New England standout and a 1981 inductee of the school’s Athletic Hall of Fame.

He was between the pipes for one of the more impressive goaltending performances in ECAC playoff history, a 64-save effort against the University of Vermont in the 1972 tournament that remains the all-time league record for saves in a playoff game.

Geragosian graduated in 1975 and became a marketing teacher at Wakefield High School before returning to Lowell as a coach in 1978. He helped lead his alma mater to four-straight ECAC Division II championships (1979-82) and three Division II national championships before the school made the leap to Division I in the mid-1980s.

Geragosian remained at Lowell until 1992, helping guide the Chiefs to their first D-I NCAA tournament bid before he went on to Princeton and was signed as the director of development for goaltenders for USA Hockey in Massachusetts, a position he still holds. He has also been a scout for the USA Hockey national men’s and women’s teams for the past decade.

MOLDING TALENT

Three decades after he started playing in college, Geragosian has come to realize a simple maxim: “There is a correlation: how your goaltending goes, your team goes.”

Geragosian arrived at BU in 1999 on the heels of a disappointing campaign, and things weren’t looking too bright on Babcock Street. Senior Michele Larocque had graduated, and the Terriers’ goaltending prospects included untested sophomore Jason Tapp and a rookie from the U.S. National Team Development Program, Rick DiPietro.

“He came at a time when we needed a good goaltending coach,” Parker said, “and he did a tremendous job with Ricky.”

Having known him since he was about 8 years old, Geragosian was the perfect mentor to maximize DiPietro’s potential. Geragosian and DiPietro first met when the younger was playing for the North Shore Raiders and was a camper at one of Geragosian’s goalie schools.

The pair then reunited about seven years later, when DiPietro joined the Massachusetts division of USA Hockey. Though he wasn’t seeing any ice time as a sophomore at St. Sebastian’s, Geragosian worked with him, and off of a strong performance at a summer tournament, DiPietro was selected to play for the National Development Team.

“Encouraging him and working with him that summer kind of escalated him, and ironically, two years later, I’m coaching him again and he escalated again,” Geragosian said.

As a freshman, DiPietro carried BU to its sixth-straight Beanpot championship and produced a playoff performance similar to that of his coach’s 28 years before, making 77 saves in a four-overtime 3-2 loss to St. Lawrence in the 2000 NCAA tournament.

“Ricky in one year improved mentally probably 50-60 percent in his thinking and his attitude,” Geragosian said. “Rick DiPietro really worked for me. We had a real strong rapport, and I got a lot out of Rick DiPietro.”

But that summer, DiPietro left to be the top pick in the NHL Entry Draft, and so BU’s last line of defense was again uncertain. Stopping by a captain’s practice in early fall 2000 didn’t alleviate any of Geragosian’s concerns.

“When I watched Sean Fields the first day, I was up in the stands kind of feeling out captain’s practice,” he said. “I was very nervous because his technical part of the game was a mess. In hockey, goaltending is technical, it’s physical, it’s mental and it’s tactical. I think Sean basically flunked the technical, basically flunked the tactical.

“For the physical, I went to Mike Boyle and I asked him one question: ‘Is this kid an athlete? Because if he’s not an athlete, we’re in trouble.’ He said, ‘Yeah he’s awesome. He can do a lot of agility drills, he’s got strength, he’s got size.’ From that, we reconstructed Sean Fields, from his stance to his whole technical style.”

Geragosian ascribed Fields’s evolution to his ability to learn quickly, saying Fields was able to make all the necessary mental adjustments to compliment his naturally impressive motor-twitch reflexes.

In Fields’ first-ever college game, he shut out Merrimack. He has been just as impressive this year as BU’s number one netminder, racking up an impressive record of 18-5-2 and ranking no lower than fourth among Hockey East goaltenders in every major statistical category. He has also been the anchor of BU’s current seven-game winning streak, the team’s longest since the one snapped with Geragosian’s help four years ago.

“Sean has improved 90 percent in technical ability since he got here,” Geragosian said.

In addition to improving BU’s goalies, Geragosian also studies film to assess the weaknesses of the opponents’ netminders, and as a student of the game for more than three decades, he imparts his wisdom wherever he can.

“I think I can add plus-2 every game,” he said. “My job as a goalie coach is to not just have my goalie make one more save than he should. Picking apart the other goaltender, watching film on the other goaltender and discussing it with the other coaches can add a goal, too. Instead of maybe giving up one more, we’re not only getting that, we’re getting one more. If I can continue to be plus-2, I can walk out of the rink saying, ‘Great.'”

Geragosian delivers a one-minute speech before each game, posting a chart of the opposing goalie’s weaknesses. He said Northeastern University freshman Keni Gibson is among the hardest to breakdown, but said with “80 percent of the goalies in the league, after seeing them once I have a pretty good idea of where to beat them.”

A TEACHER FIRST

After teaching at Wakefield High for 23 years, Geragosian moved to Nashoba Valley Vocational High School in 1999. He said he loves to provide students with the “success vehicles” they need to achieve, whether it be a student who was branded a problem child at an early age or a young goalie who comes to one of his dozen camps each year.

“He’s always a teacher first,” Parker said.

Geragosian shares a great rapport with his students on the ice. His favorites are players like Ryan Priem and Steve Greeley, skaters who struggle to crack the regular lineup but whose contributions to the team are invaluable.

“Guys like Ryan Priem you look in the eye and thank everyday,” Geragosian said. “When Fieldsy plays a great game, I say, ‘Thanks, guys, for helping me. He had a great game because you guys are down the other end while the other four lines are practicing and you’re here shooting with me.’

“I don’t treat them any different than the first line. I try to keep it loose with those guys, get close to them and keep them around. We need them.”

Fields said his position coach is a joker, usually coming to practice in a good mood but knowing when not to mess around.

“When it comes down to business, they know the game is on and we’re not going to be joking around,” Geragosian said. “But they also know I keep it a little looser, and I think assistant coaches play that role. The three assistants have a different rapport with the players than Jack does. We can see the kids out and say, ‘Hey, nice ‘do man. Did she dump ya?'”

Geragosian directs three or four in-season camps and several more during the off-season. One Geragosian product is University of New Hampshire goalie Michael Ayers, who Geragosian strongly recommended to New Hampshire and Northeastern because “he’s a good kid.”

“You really have to separate it. In the long run you’ve got to do what’s best for the kids, not the program you’re at,” Geragosian said. “I always try to be in the interest of the player even though it could come back to haunt you. There’s nothing in it for me. I just try to help the kids along basically.”

But after all the players he’s helped along throughout the country, one of the most promising may be his own son, Adam, a senior at Lawrence Academy.

When he was only 14 years old, Adam led St. John’s Prep to the Massachusetts high school Super 8 tournament, playing against – and beating – the likes of BU’s Mark Mullen, then at BC High School, and UNH’s Steve Saviano and Sean Collins, then teammates at Reading High School.

Adam has been pursued by Division I programs, but will instead play a year at a prep school before joining the NCAA. His father says he has all the tools to be a major talent and is continually developing the attitude it takes to play in college.

“Caring about what you do and having a lot of pride in what you do is the most important thing,” Mike Geragosian said. “That’s me, and I try to do it with a smile and with a grin.”