Sure, winning is nice. But it isn’t everything. Just ask Berkshire School coach Dan Driscoll.
Entering his 15th season at the helm of the Sheffield, Mass., prep school, Driscoll, a Lynn, Mass. native, obviously enjoys winning. He just sees himself as an educator more than anything else.
After 20-plus years spent working in prep hockey, the longtime head coach, who joined the elite 400 career wins club last season, has grown accustomed to being a mentor in all aspects of life, developing high school kids into high-end players on the ice and high-end individuals off of it.
Most importantly, he knows how to get the most out of each player who walks through his door.
“I think one of the real benefits of being a part of a school and an athletic program and scholastic hockey is that we’re able to work with kids in many different arenas,” Driscoll said in a recent interview with New England Hockey Journal. “Obviously, hockey is the one that we care about the most, but it’s also an opportunity to see kids wearing different types of hats and us wearing different hats, so it’s much more of a wholistic approach to building great, healthy young adults.
“That’s really the reason I’ve stayed in the prep world for so long. We have a lot of contact with the kids, a lot of interaction, and we get to see their development at a close level and participate in that development closely throughout their high school years. It’s a blessing in many respects.”
For his efforts behind the bench, Driscoll’s been named New England Prep Coach of the Year four times (1997, 1999, 2007, 2013) and won three New England championships.
At Berkshire, a smaller program with fewer hockey players than most of the other prep schools in the region, Driscoll carefully selects who he brings into the program, which allows him and his staff more time to work one-on-one and gradually develop their skills.
“I think the best way for a player to develop is to have that sense of creativity but to also develop a sense of accountability to each other and to their teammates,” Driscoll said. “I think kids learn best by making mistakes, so we allow them that freedom to try new things, be creative and make mistakes, and get better that way. I think kids feel when you put that investment in them and you get that investment back tenfold … that results in a pretty healthy culture in our room.”
Driscoll is always looking toward the future and how one year’s team can mold into the next.
“We’re not a program that … we can’t reload every year,” Driscoll said. “We rebuild. We just don’t take a lot of hockey players here at Berkshire. We really are surgical in finding kids that are really great kids, but we don’t have 120 hockey players here. And that investment in their development pays off. It may not pay off year after year, but it pays off every couple of years.”
Some recent Berkshire alumni who have played under Driscoll’s lead include defenseman Kevan Miller (Boston Bruins, University of Vermont); Canton, Mass., native Kevin Rooney (New Jersey Devils, Providence College); and Chris McCarthy (Hershey Bears, UVM).
A look back, 2019-20: Returning to the Elite 8
Going into November, there weren’t a lot of people who thought Berkshire would be one of the top eight teams in New England come playoff time. Yet, for the first time since 2014 in the first weekend of March, there Berkshire was, vying for the Elite 8 championship as the No. 8 seed.
While its arrival as one of the season’s most dominant teams might have come as a surprise to some, it didn’t to the players. Under the radar, a quietly confident group knew what it was capable of.
“We had a great deal of confidence going into that playoff,” Driscoll said. “We weren’t surprised.”
Frontloaded by senior centermen Aidan Thompson, who is set to play a year in the USHL before joining the University of Denver, and captain Briggs Gammill, a Yale commit, Berkshire began the season 4-0-1. Coming out of the Avon Old Farms Christmas Hockey Classic, however, that red-hot start quickly evaporated, as the team went on a skid and lost six of its next seven games.
After some serious self-reflection brought on by the seniors, it didn’t take long to right the ship.
Led by the veteran core of Gammill and Thompson, as well junior netminder Jed Baliotti (New Hampshire commit) and several other upperclassmen, such as Jack Whitney (Michigan lacrosse) and Griffin Grise (Colby College), the Bears quickly returned to their winning ways. By the end of January, they proved they were all the way back with a pair of statement wins in back-to-back games against two of New England’s best, Avon Old Farms and Salisbury. In three days, no less.
“We just had a great group of seniors,” Driscoll said, “unbelievable team leadership.”
Fueled by its second-half resurgence, Berkshire was firing on all cylinders going into the Elite 8.
Its opponent in the quarterfinals? Top-seeded Lawrence Academy. Anchored by another spectacular performance from Baliotti in net, on the road and in front of a packed house, Berkshire upset the Spartans 3-2 in overtime after being heavily outshot in the extra period, courtesy of Gammill’s game-winner that came on a feed from Thompson, who’s third-period tally evened it at two-all.
When all was said and done — after the Bears were shut out by Dexter Southfield 3-0 in the Elite 8 semifinals — Thompson finished the season with a team-best 52 points, while Gammill capped it off at 45. The team’s next-highest scorer, Cumberland, Maine, native Jake MacDonald, had 18.
Equally as important to the Bears’ success was the emergent play of Baliotti between the pipes. In 25 games, the junior phenom from New Canaan, Conn., was the star goaltender that every team needs to go on a run, amassing a .930 save percentage and 2.06 goals-against average.
For his efforts, Baliotti’s stock rose immensely throughout the season, resulting in an April offer from the University of New Hampshire. Still enrolled virtually at Berkshire, Baliotti is currently playing out in Green Bay, Driscoll said, and it is unknown if he will return for his senior season.
“If things open up in January, maybe he’ll be back. We’ll see how it goes for him out there.”
A look ahead, 2020-21: Aiming to stay there
Berkshire is losing a number of its veteran players and the depth they provided the program. The most obvious and crucial losses come in the form of Thompson and Gammill up front. With 97 of the team’s 240 total points between the two of them, they’re a pretty tough pair to replace.
And it wasn’t just what they did on the ice that made them so impactful. Away from the surface, Driscoll said, they were instrumental in shaping the program into the playoff contender it turned out to be, one that marched through one of the toughest schedules in New England and beat the top four teams it could find, before downing the No. 1 playoff seed in the first round on the road.
For this year’s returners, last year’s taste of success only fuels the fire to get back to that stage.
“I think winning breeds winning and having those high standards and those type of kids that kind of created those high standards last year has only made our program better,” Driscoll said. “Last year has only raised the bar for everybody, so it’s been great. We’re looking forward to this year.
“We’re really excited about the kids we’ve got coming in. We think we’re going to be even deeper than we were last year up front. We’re really strong on ‘D’ and we’re excited about our goaltending, so we’re going to be a very strong team, but we’re going to be a bit different.”
Primarily, with Thompson and Gammill moving on, the scoring should be more spread out.
Up front, Hayden Riva (Union College commit), Cole Paredes (Norwalk, Conn.), Pratt Stetson (Sheffield, Mass.) and MacDonald will be tasked with taking over the offensive reins.
“Hayden’s a pretty special talent, brings energy to everything he does,” Driscoll said. “Paredes played a significant role for us last year, and MacDonald, Blaise’s son (Colby College coach), he’s a dynamic player.”
In an already-solid back end, Driscoll noted rising senior Abdoul Diouf (Montreal, Quebec) as well as soon-to-be sophomore Liam Bard as players to keep an eye on. “Diouf, I think he’s a sure-fire Division 1, 6-foot-3, defenseman,” Driscoll said. “Bard, he’s on a lot of guys’ radars.”
The Bears are bringing in ’03 defenseman Davis Kinne (Swampscott, Mass.), who played for St. Mary’s High last season, as well as ’03 forwards and Boise, Idaho, natives Jackson Howell and Calvin Osterberger, who both come via the 16-U AAA Rocky Mountain Roughriders.
“We’re very excited,” Driscoll said. “We think we’re going to be deep. We think we’re going to be pretty fast and think we’re going to have an edge to us that’s going to translate to success.”
Liam Flaherty can be reached at liam.flaherty@hockeyjournal.com and on Twitter @_LiamFlaherty.
