Kind of hard to believe that Bob Deraney’s collection of Hockey East pennants still –now by one tally- outnumbers that of his league Coach of the Year laurels.
Deraney’s Providence College Friars won each of the WHEA’s first three playoff crowns from 2003 through 2005, and they have made it as far as the semifinals every year since the secession from the ECAC. Yet he went without any individual accolades until a year ago, when he and his pupils pulled off a District-Five-to-Ducks turnaround and astonishingly won the right to host the conference tournament.
But on Friday night, the 12th-year Friars’ foreman nailed yet another milestone by becoming the first bench boss in league history to repeat his individual title. Not even New Hampshire’s Brian McCloskey, a league-leading four-time honoree, can claim he has ever done that.
Okay, McCloskey split the award with Boston College’s Tom Mutch in 2005, and then had it all to himself in 2006. So that just means Deraney is the first coach to earn the honor in consecutive years without having to share the limelight.
Of course, if there was a plaque for unmatched humility in Hockey East, Deraney would undoubtedly come out on top in yet another competitive pool. Take it from an author who splits his ink between this website and the PC student newspaper and has covered nearly every Friars’ home game in person for the last three-plus years.
That notwithstanding –ditto this author’s misfire in preordaining another worthy candidate, Maine’s Maria Lewis, for this year’s award- there is no sense in ignoring the obvious source of PC’s peerless consistency throughout the now-dying first decade of the WHEA.
Think about it. Not even the artists formerly known as the Granite State Goddesses, even with their five national tournament passports and two Frozen Four appearances, can claim they’ve been to all nine conference dances. Nor can they claim any longer that they’ve concocted an overall record of .500 or better every year.
The refined Rhode Islanders can. And because he has been the sole constant in the program this whole time, Deraney is bound to have packages of praise dropped on his porch, whether he answers the doorbell and signs for them or not.
“Obviously, he’s an amazing coach,” said PC junior forward Abby Gauthier. “And we’ve had success because he’s very positive with his players and always wants the best out of them.”
That would explain why, in the years since its last merry March, Providence has never succumbed to “small-school syndrome” or any related conditions. Even when they were trudging through a few years of plain mediocrity, circa 2007-2009, the Friars were grinding it out and vacuuming every scrap of respectability there was to gain.
The only two times a Deraney-led team has come close to a losing record, in both 2006-07 and 2007-08, they finished on the fence at 16-16-4 overall and curtained their run with a championship loss to the almighty Wildcats. In the second of those years, the arguable nadir of Deraney’s reign fell during Part I of the final weekend of the regular season.
A Leap Day road loss to a bedraggled Boston College team rendered the Friars’ postseason hopes questionable. That wouldn’t do for Deraney. The next day, in a rematch at Schneider Arena, he commemorated Senior Day by sending the last five holdovers from that glorified 2005 team –Rachel Crissy, Kelli Doolin, Cherie Hendrickson, Jenna Keilch, and Kathleen Smith- to take the first shift.
The Friars ultimately salvaged a point in a 2-2 tie, nudging them into third place and ending BC’s valiant run. From there, they proceeded to shellshock Connecticut, 5-1, in the Hockey East semifinals, popping the No. 8 Huskies’ NCAA bubble.
Was that the best Deraney could have pulled out of that rebuilding bunch? If not, then fairly close. And the same could be said about 2008-09, when the heavily leaned-on class of 2012 enrolled and went through a year of “growing pains” that ended with a 17-16-3 transcript and another postseason dismissal at the hands of McCloskey’s capstone students.
Those unripe puckslingers have since evolved into dependable juniors and seniors. And after a turbulent 4-7-6 start to the 2009-10 campaign –defined mostly by injuries and a rash of ranked competition- the telltale sign of Deraney’s patience paying off arrived on Dec. 5, 2009, when Providence snapped New Hampshire’s lifelong home unbeaten streak in Hockey East action.
Starting at that point, and leading up to this weekend’s semifinal date with BC, the Friars have gone 33-15-4. They have sculpted a 2010-11 resume that falls merely ice chips, as opposed to about two rink-lengths, short of qualifying for an automatic bid.
They have topped the Wildcats in four of five more opportunities. They have returned to the postseason while their time-honored rivals missed on the very last day –a shortcoming that, again, didn’t befall the Friars back in 2008.
They have consistently finished fourth or higher in the standings since 2002-03. And by dislodging Maine last week in the relatively new quarterfinal format, they averted any asterisks by earning a Hockey East semifinal spot for the ninth time in nine all-time tries.
“I take a lot of pride in it,” said Deraney. “Just like beating UNH up there for the first time when no other Hockey East team had, winning the first championship, winning the first regular season. That’s what this program’s all about from back in (1974-75), when we were one of the first teams to have women’s ice hockey.
“We’re all about firsts. It’s not lost on us. We’re proud to have our institution at the top of all the milestones.”
He won’t do it, of course, but he can now shake his own hand for making his program the face of another landmark.
Al Daniel is the Hockey East correspondent to Beyond The Dashers
No comments:
Post a Comment