“This had Josh’s fingerprints all over it.”
So said Merrimack College coach Scott Borek a few minutes after his team’s impressive 5-1 win at Boston College on Nov. 5.
It was just over a month after the Warriors were rocked by the death of assistant coach Josh Ciocco.
Absolutely no one would have been surprised if Ciocco’s sudden and tragic passing at just 38 years of age had plunged Merrimack into a tailspin and derailed its season.
But it didn’t. Instead, the Warriors have been an inspiring story, rising to the top of Hockey East over the first half of the season.
And Ciocco’s fingerprints have been there for all to see.
The team’s success is a testament to the strength and resilience of Borek, his coaching staff and the players that Ciocco had a prominent role in recruiting along with fellow assistant Dan Jewell.
It’s been a hard road. Immediately after Ciocco’s passing on Oct. 3, Merrimack faced a difficult decision.
The news about Ciocco came on a Monday. A few days later the Warriors were scheduled to get on a bus to the North Country in New York to open the season with games against St. Lawrence and Clarkson on Friday and Saturday.
To play or not to play?
Borek, heartsick and grieving for his close friend, left it up to his players.
The games went on as scheduled.
“Some decisions we made, who knows if they’re right or wrong? They would look right today, but I still don’t know if it was the right thing to go play those games,” Borek said just before New Year’s.
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“I wasn’t excited about it at all, but the team was and I let them carry the day on that. It’s their season and they deserve to have a good season, so we let them make that decision for us.”
Wearing “JC” patches on their sweaters, the Warriors lost at St. Lawrence, 3-1, but rallied in the third period for a 3-2 win the next night at Clarkson.
The game-winner, on the power play, was scored by grad student Tristan Crozier, who came to Merrimack after graduating from Brown. Ciocco, as an assistant coach at Brown before he moved over to Merrimack when Borek was hired in 2018, was involved in recruiting Crozier. Then last spring, Ciocco was the point man in convincing Crozier to come to Merrimack.
“I will always appreciate Josh for believing in me. He didn’t sugarcoat. It was his character, his honesty, his integrity that I was really attracted to,” said Crozier.
When it was Crozier who scored the winner at Clarkson for Merrimack’s first victory of the season, there was a very real sense that Ciocco was watching over the Warriors.
“I felt that the minute it happened. I said something to Tristan after the game. It was very fitting. It’s exactly how Josh would have wanted it, on the power play, which is Josh’s baby,” said Borek. “A lot of things in that game, in that goal, spoke to the fact that, hey, Josh is part of our season and he’s part of our team forever.”
Merrimack was picked for eighth place in the Hockey East coaches poll. But, playing for each other and honoring the memory of their late assistant coach, the Warriors broke into the top 10 nationally in the first half. Ciocco and Jewell recruited players with character, and that trait was never more important than after Ciocco passed away.
“It’s not like I just lost a coach. I lost a great friend, someone who’s a lot more than a friend to me for a long time,” said Borek.
“Our players, though, you get forced to grow up. 'Man up' is not the right term, but just grow up and make decisions that are outside your best interests.
“I think that’s really what you want a team to become, and to have that happen as quickly as it did for our team, there’s no doubt that Josh the person and then Josh in his passing impacted that incredibly,” Borek said.
“It’s not a great thing, but in his passing he accelerated our team. Because we had to lean on each other in a way that most teams never have to do. And I don’t want any team to have to do. I don’t ever want to do it again.
“But there’s no question in my mind that that process brought our team to a place where we were able to come together out of need, not out of want, and play in a certain selfless way — and that includes the guys that were sitting in the stands.”
An example of that, Borek said, was assistant captain Crozier in a game at BC. He didn’t get a shift until there were just 90 seconds left.
“He was our 13th forward, but because of who he is and the kind of human being he is, he handled that so well," Borek said. "I’m sure he was pissed (at me). Who wouldn’t be? I don’t blame him for that at all. But he was a great teammate and a great captain.”
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At times, other players have sat, too, from upperclassmen wearing letters to freshmen, Borek said, with the same outcome. No sulking, everyone putting the team first and pulling in the same direction.
“I don’t know if those guys would have handled it the same way if our team had not been through what we’ve been through. That, I think, is the legacy Josh will have with us forever. He helped bring really good people, forget players, but really good people to our program,” Borek said.
The connection between Borek and Ciocco goes back to when Borek was an assistant at New Hampshire and Ciocco was playing in the BCHL.
“He was in Vernon, playing for Mike Vandekamp. Mike and I were good buddies," Borek said. "So when I got the job at UNH, I called him up and said, ‘Hey, this is kind of what we’re looking for. We want a leader. We want a competitive guy.’ We had enough top-six guys. We needed a bottom-six guy. Josh was all of that."
Ciocco came to UNH, and by the time he was a sophomore “we were already friends,” Borek said. That’s not necessarily the norm in a player-coach relationship.
“He would talk very openly to me and me to him. I coached the power play there and he always wanted to be on it and I never put him on it. We’d joke about that. He was a team-first guy, competed like a bastard,” said Borek.
Ciocco was a two-time Wildcats captain.
“He was a great captain. He understood the funnel," Borek said. "There’s some things the coach has to know and has to handle and there’s things the coach doesn’t need to know. He understood that as well as any captain that I know. He contributed in so many ways that had nothing to do with how he played in the rink.”
Borek always believed that Ciocco was destined for a career in hockey. He spent one year with Fresno of the ECHL (his coaches were Matt Thomas and Ryan Mougenel, both now with the Providence Bruins) before retiring as a player and eventually getting into coaching.
“I knew he’d be in hockey. I just didn’t know what he’d be. He was always about hockey,” said Borek.
No matter how this season finishes, Ciocco’s legacy will live on at Merrimack.
“Everybody knows that every game is a little more meaningful (this season),” said Crozier. “There’s somebody watching over us. We all carry Josh’s name in our hearts whenever we’re on the ice.”
