Steve Dagdigian, then the head hockey coach at St. Sebastian’s, had his hands on the back of Carl Corazzini’s chair.
He was addressing the team about hazing. Dagdigian couldn’t have made himself any clearer: There would be no more hazing. Whether it had or hadn’t happened with his teams in the past, it definitely wouldn’t happen going forward. This was the mid-1990s.
“That was completely different in that era,” Corazzini said.
Corazzini, a quiet teenager at the time with a loud impact on the ice, let his shoulders fall and relaxed. An instantaneous change came over him: He felt comfortable being himself.
“That was such a big moment in my life,” he said.
There was the time Corazzini was skating around, and Jed Doherty, then an assistant at St. Sebastian’s, asked the 16-year-old what his dreams and aspirations were.
“Huh?” Corazzini remembered thinking. “What do you mean?”
Both of those conversations were far from the focus of teenage hockey players.
“It was just at that moment that you knew that those two people genuinely cared about you as an individual,” Corazzini said.
Corazzini’s dreams and aspirations were hockey. He played four years at Boston University, including being a captain his senior year. He moved on to the pros, playing 519 AHL games and 19 NHL games. He finished his playing career overseas from 2009 to 2011.
Then came the transition back to regular life, and he was determined not to live the rest of his life like a schnook, as Henry Hill put it at the end of “Goodfellas.”
Corazzini coached two seasons at Weston High School (MIAA) and did hockey training. In 2014, he got hooked up with St. Mark’s and took the head boys hockey coach job.
It’s been 11 years. In that time, St. Mark’s has gone 196-81-18. Corazzini has overseen the development of six players who’ve played at least a game for the U.S. National Team Development Program and three players who went on to play in the NHL.
Word has gotten around. Players want to play at St. Mark’s, which wasn’t known for being a hockey school. Corazzini has made it into that.
“He was what stood out the most,” St. Mark’s junior forward and Providence College commit Caiden Pellegrino said. “Both my parents really liked him and his approach. He was asking questions that other coaches wouldn’t normally ask.”
“It was more than the hockey thing,” senior forward and Dartmouth commit Will Manchuso said. “I got to know him really well. That’s how I found my fit here.”
“It comes down to his personal connection with everybody,” senior forward Evan Nee said.
Those personal connections helped the Lions score their first Elite 8 berth in school history last season.
It’s also why expectations have never been higher.
St. Mark’s typically plays Dexter Southfield at the beginning of the season. It serves as a measuring stick going up against the bigger, more popular metro Boston prep school.
In the second game of the season, the Lions took down Dexter, 5-1.
“We were all hearing about how Dexter is this big team and an Elite 8 favorite,” Pellegrino said. “We had a really good game, and that got all the boys in the locker room to become a close-knit family.”
What also bonded them together was their captain, Drew Carr. In the fall of 2023, Carr was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He beat cancer and returned to play the second half of that season, debuting on Jan. 6, 2024.
“I want to live in the moment without worrying about what’s to come in the future or any of that,” Carr told New England Hockey Journal shortly after that game. “Just to give it my all every day and be with all my friends.”
Carr carried that mindset into being the captain as a senior. He gave a perspective that only he could bring.
“After everything he’s gone through with cancer and viewing life a different way, he set the standard with our team right from the fall,” Nee said. “Our locker room was perfect. No bad-mouthing anybody. That’s what I think is really important: You can have a great team, but you can have a bad locker room. You might have some toxic players in there. But Drew really kept everybody in check.”
That translated to the ice. Despite losing to Winchendon right after that Dexter win, the Lions sailed. Carr posted 37 points. Nee went from being a secondary scorer to the team’s leading point-getter with 51. Manchuso and Pellegrino were go-to guys immediately.
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And, above all, senior netminder Justin BriseBois broke out as the best goalie in the region.
“Going into the season, people thought we weren’t going to be that great,” Nee said. “But I think we all deep down knew that we had the ability to go really far. We had a couple hiccups, but we kept bouncing back.”
They bounced back enough to finish as the No. 2 seed in the Elite 8, setting up a date with Rivers in the quarterfinals. The star-studded Red Wings took down St. Mark’s, 5-3, before falling to Dexter, 6-2.
“A couple of us went to the Dexter-Rivers game after,” Manchuso said. “It was kind of a tough feeling.
“Knowing that we could be in that big of a game this year, it’s just more motivation.”
Corazzini couldn’t sleep. This wasn’t just a one-night thing. It wasn’t because he had the game of his life the next day or a huge exam. He simply couldn’t sleep for a long time.
“The (St. Mark’s) kids will be like, ‘What do you mean by not sleep?’ and I was like, ‘What do you think isn’t sleeping?’ And they were like, ‘Five hours.’ ” Corazzini said. “I’m like, ‘No, I slept 90 minutes a night for the whole year.’ ”
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That was life for the Framingham, Mass., native in his first two seasons at Boston University from 1997-99.
“I’d take my sleeping aids, but then in order to perform the next day, you’d have to take something to get up,” Corazzini said. “That’s where the Sudafed would come in that we took at the time. And then it was this vicious cycle that I just could never get out of.”
Corazzini had always struggled with stress and anxiety, with much of it stemming from being obsessed with his on-ice performance.
“I slept better year to year, but the paragon of it never being enough, whatever I did on the ice, it wasn’t good enough, and you’re always worrying what other people — like a coach — think of you,” Corazzini said. “Because you assigned your value to how much you played.”
Those struggles continued into his professional career.
“I was a pretty good American Hockey League player,” Corazzini said. “But in the three or four call-ups that I got, to be able to jump over the mental hurdle of that I could do those things at that level. I was a fast enough player to play at the National Hockey League level. I had the skills to play at that level.
“But I never thought I was that good.”
During Corazzini’s time at BU, longtime hockey trainer Larry Venis introduced him to yoga to fix his injured groin. The most important part was that Venis emphasized that it would just help him nurse his groin.
He let Corazzini figure out the real benefits of yoga on his own.
“He never positioned it to me that it would help with the idea of mind and body,” Corazzini said. “As an end result, yoga became a part of my life from 1998-99 to when I finished playing in 2011-12.”
When he arrived at St. Mark’s, he didn’t just get named head boys hockey coach — he works full-time as the school’s director of health and wellness. He’s also an assistant coach for the varsity baseball team and is the interim head coach of boys varsity soccer this fall.
“He really cares for everybody,” Nee said. “Ask the kids who don’t play hockey. The kids on the robotics team. Everyone knows Mr. Corazzini. He’s always a friendly face to see, he knows everybody in the hallways. He knows everyone’s name.”
That matters to teenagers — hockey players or not — at such a volatile and impressionable age.
“I get to work with all 300-plus of our students,” Corazzini said. “I think our kids see me interacting with the cross-section of our student body, and I think when they see that, they’re more willing to do it themselves.”
It’s common for hockey players, especially now, to feel the way Corazzini did when he played. Value gets attached to how well they’re performing, playing time, wins and losses, junior hockey aspirations, whether or not they’re getting recruited by Division 1 schools — the list could go on forever.
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Somewhere in there, players start to question who they are as a person if they don’t check one of those boxes.
“You’re trying to give them the techniques and skills and language to be able to take care of themselves when those instances arise,” Corazzini said. “So we do formal mindfulness here.”
St. Mark’s students can take it as a class or an “opportunity.” With the hockey team, it’s taking the first 10 minutes of practice to refocus from the school day, stickhandle with pucks and ease into playing. Corazzini often gives players journals or Post-it notes to write down their goals to focus on in practice, a workout or in a game.
It might be as simple as catching five backhanded passes in a practice.
“The wins have been great here at St. Mark’s,” Corazzini said. “But what we try to preach is care more about the individual than the result.”
On a late October afternoon, Manchuso leans against the glass along the boards at Gardner Ice Rink.
“This is our year,” he says.
It’s hard not to believe him. Manchuso, given a ‘C’ rating for a fourth- or fifth-round candidate by NHL Central Scouting, projects to be one of the best players in the region. Nee, who is still uncommitted, and Pellegrino should be right there with him in terms of production and impact.
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Those are just three. Cam MacPherson (Hopkinton, Mass.), one of the most underrated players in prep, is an uncommitted ’08 junior coming off two seasons with 30 or more points in each.
“He’s someone that can help drive culture,” Corazzini said of MacPherson. “He’s someone that has to got to do all the right things all the time to reach his goal of being a Division 1 hockey player. You’re hoping that what comes of this year for him is that he proves that beyond a shadow of a doubt.”
Then there are seniors like Teddy Drury and Max Santos.
“They become the guys that are the differentiators between being a playoff team or a truly high-end contender,” Corazzini said. “If they have good-sized years, we’re a really good hockey club.”
St. Mark’s lost defenseman Moussa Seydi a year early to the CHL, so the core centers around Phin Howard, Blake Grislis and Jack Taylor. Grislis brings the offense, Taylor brings the compete and Howard does it all.
“They’re going to have to play a lot of minutes alongside some younger kids,” Corazzini said.
The big question mark is in net. Out are BriseBois and Cassidy Kitteridge, who both graduated, and in are Aaron Alves-Thomas (Boston, Mass.), Julian Herrera and Craig Haas.
Alves-Thomas was with La Salle Academy in Rhode Island high school hockey last season and has been playing with the Providence Capitals’ 16-U squad this fall. Herrera is 6-foot-3 and played for Smithfield High School in Rhode Island last year and has been playing up on the 18U Minuteman Flames. Haas played for Brookline High School (MIAA) last season and has been playing with the 18U Minuteman Flames. He’s the only ’08, while Alves-Thomas and Herrera are ’09s.
“If we play the way that we should and we’re not giving up high-danger chances, we should be fine,” Corazzini said.
The expectations are much higher this season than in any recent years. Players understand that every team will have their game against St. Mark’s circled on the calendar.
“It’ll take a full team effort to get back to where we were last year,” Pellegrino said. “And then even further to push to get a championship. But I believe in this team 100 percent and we saw what we were last year. We’re older now, bigger and stronger.
“If we come out hard, I think we can get the job done.”
But before Manchuso can declare that it's St. Mark's year, Corazzini is brought up.
"You can have a conversation with him," Manchuso says. "The big thing for him is food. That's a good topic."
Once Manchuso is done talking, Nee takes a similar spot against the glass. He feels the same about Corazzini.
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"Before we step on the ice for captain's practice in a few hours, he wants to talk to everybody," Nee said. "He's been doing that for the last couple of weeks now, forming a real connection with everyone on the team. It's definitely not like other coaches or other schools.
"He really wants to see you succeed. Not just on the ice, but as a person."
Those lessons from Dagdigian and Doherty are bearing fruit even all these years later.
