OAKLAND — For Messalonskee coaches Joe Hague and John DelGiudice Tuesday’s 8-3 win over Winslow in the Eastern Class B boys hockey championship was nearly 20 years in the making.
In the 1995-96 season — the second such for Messalonskee hockey as a varsity team — Hague was a senior captain for the Eagles, while DelGiudice was one of three coaches along with Danny Bolduc and Dick Young. That year they went 17-2-1 during the regular season in Eastern B and had hopes of challenging traditional power Winslow for the regional title behind players like Nick Bragg, Nate Ponitz, Ryan Ridky and Hague.
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Only they never got the chance. According to DelGiudice, the Eagles ran into a hot goaltender in the semifinals and dropped a 2-1 decision to Stearns — whom they had beaten handily just a few weeks prior.
So there the two were Tuesday night in Alfond Arena at the University of Maine, Hague in his first year as head coach of the Eagles with DelGiudice his assistant. They were still sporting red, white and blue, but now they finally had the gold they had sought some 19 years earlier.
“We always wanted that other chance,” Hague said. “It was kind of one of those heartfelt moments we kind of wanted a while ago.”
It is only fitting that Messalonskee will go for its second consecutive Class B championship Saturday with both Hague and DelGiudice on the bench. Twenty years ago both were there when the Eagles made the move from club to varsity hockey for the 1995-96 season and now both have returned for the most successful period in the team’s history.
After guiding the Eagles to a perfect 21-0-0 record and the program’s first state title last winter, Mike Latendresse stepped down as head coach after 12 seasons at the helm to take an assistant coaching position with the Colby College men’s hockey team. Even compared to some of the teams he coached that competed in Class A, Latendresse still believes last year’s team was the best he had at Messalonskee.
“It was the best team that I coached (at Messalonskee),” Latendresse said Tuesday. “It’s the type of team you would have to think was one of the top five teams ever, not only in Class A or B but in Maine (high school) hockey.”
“…I would put that team against any other team, any other year and I think we would be very successful no matter the year.”
DelGiudice said he would put last year’s squad atop the list of each team Messalonskee has fielded in the past 20 years, but noted that lists of that nature are difficult to make as well.
In addition to its overall record, the 1995-96 team featured one of the program’s top players in Ponitz. The defenseman was the program’s all-time leading scorer with 192 points until Chase Cunningham (251 points) set the new standard last season.
From the early years with players like Mike and Brian Engert to when Andy Cyr took over as head coach from the 1998-99 season to 2000-01, the Eagles always seemed to be competitive. Latendresse’s arrival marked a shift not only in regime but in competition, as it was under his direction the Eagles began playing in Class A.
DelGiudice may have been gone but he was always around the program, as he had a son playing at Messalonskee just about every year of Latendresse’s 12-year tenure.
“I had a DelGiudice on my team for the first nine years pretty much,” Latendresse said. “They were special kids, all talented the three of them.”
The oldest DelGiudice, Matt, was a finalist for the Travis Roy Award in his senior year with the Eagles, while the youngest, Nate, was a standout goaltender who recently wrapped up his freshman year on the University of Southern Maine men’s hockey team.
Outside of last season, Latendresse’s best came in 2006 when Matt DelGiudice was a sophomore and the team was led by senior Ted Fabian. The 2006 Travis Roy Award Winner, Fabian helped lead the Eagles to the Eastern A semifinals that season.
“It was a tremendous honor to step on the ice everyday,” Fabian, now the coach of the Lawrence/Skowhegan co-op, said. “I grew up watching my cousin and all the guys before me put on that Eagles jersey. I actually remember me and all my cousins wearing a Blethen No. 12 jersey because my cousin Ryan played at Messalonskee.”
With players like Fabian, Blethen, the DelGiudices, Phil Mason, Zach Parent and Mike Hachey, the Eagles were consistently a playoff a team in Class A. It was not until Messalonskee moved back to Class B for the 2011-12 season that its current era of dominance began though.
Tuesday’s Eastern B title was the Eagles’ fourth straight and for players like senior goaltender Elija Tuell, winning is all he has known at Messalonskee.
“We definitely embrace it,” the first-year starting goalie said. “It’s just a tradition of winning and it’s just not winning feels not good. We love to win, we’ve been doing it for 17 or 18 games straight so we want to keep doing that.”
Tuell and his teammates will have a chance to do so Saturday at 1 p.m. at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee against Western B champ Gorham in a rematch of last year’s final, and in the process further cement their places in Messalonskee’s hockey lore.
Evan Crawley — 621-5640
ecrawley@mainetoday.com
Twitter: @Evan_Crawley
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