On a humid July day, I approached a home at the end of a cul-de-sac in West Roxbury, Mass., and rang the doorbell. After a few moments, an older gentleman with the trademark million-dollar smile appeared.
Marty Pierce.
We had never met before, only corresponding by text and phone call, but he graciously welcomed me in.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but stepping into the house signified stepping back in time, to the late 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s and the early 1990s — times I did not know.
No, it wasn’t because the house was outdated — far from it. It was a beautiful home, with everything tidy. Ellen Pierce, his wife, would have it no other way.
But for the next four hours, Marty Pierce brought me back into a glorious past. One that featured him coaching Matignon boys hockey for 40 years, winning 640 games and 10 state championships.
Countless Division 1 commits, NHL talent and names engrained in Massachusetts high school hockey history forever. Sold out nights at Boston Garden. Mohawks. Pep rallies. Fire truck rides through Cambridge. Days off from school.
It’s hard to imagine a world like this now, especially since Matignon shut its doors for good in 2023. After Pierce stepped down from his post in 2004, the hockey team and school suffered a slow death.
The glory days of Matignon hockey, however, must live on. So, I talked with those who lived them.
Marty Pierce, head coach (1964-2004): “At first, I never thought I’d be there that long.”
Brendan Sheehy, player (1964-66), assistant coach (1971-73): “You’ve got to understand that when Marty came in, people came to Matignon not knowing there was a hockey team. We had some good players, but they didn't come to Matignon to play hockey.”
Sheehy: “Then Brian ‘Dukie’ Walsh came on the scene.”
David Fimiani, player (1973-77): “Dukie, he was the man.”
Sheehy: “I remember going to a game against Brighton his freshman year [1969-70]. He got four [goals] and six [assists] for 10 points. One game.”
Pierce: “In 1973, when we were runner-ups [to Arlington], and he was a senior defenseman, he captured the attention of a lot of people. He was just a great player and was recruited heavily, but ended up at Notre Dame. All-American.”
Sheehy: “The real ushering in of Matignon came against Malden Catholic. A lot of the good kids went to Malden Catholic. It changed when Matignon played Malden Catholic in the semifinals Dukie’s senior year [1973]. Malden Catholic had George Hughes, Mike Fidler, Buddy Goodwin, they had a really good team. And Matignon beat them, 5-4, at the Garden. Dukie was unbelievable that game. At that point, kids were like, ‘I’m going to Matignon.’”
Mark Fidler, player (1974-77), Hall of Famer at Boston University: “Dukie’s a big reason why I went to Matignon. I went and watched Matignon play against my brother’s Malden Catholic team, and he was phenomenal. Plus, my mother loved him. I took his number 4. I wore it because of him.”
Fidler: “My two brothers played for Malden Catholic and were tremendous hockey players. About four months before I was going to go to Malden Catholic, my mother said, ‘Let’s go over and tour the school.’ So we went over, and I said, ‘Mom, I don’t want to go here. I want to go where Marty Pierce is the coach.’ I wanted to go on my own and make my own name. I had met Marty a few times before. I loved his type of personality — he was my type of guy. I knew he was serious about hockey.”
While Walsh graduated in 1973, Matignon hockey’s dominance was just beginning. In 1975, the curtain opened on what Pierce called “the Fidler Show.”
Fimiani: “We had a special weapon that was Mark Fidler.”
Pierce: “Eastern Massachusetts final, we played Archbishop Williams, our rival, and won 7-4.”
Fimiani: “I remember that they had a loaded team. They had Stevie Baker in the net, who went to the NHL. Ralphie Cox was there, and he ended up at UNH, last man cut on the Olympic team. Big guy. They had an absolute wagon.”
Fimiani: “Mark was a sophomore and was just lights out. Him, [Billy] Cotter, who was his wing, and Ray Girouard, who was a senior, was our second line. Our first line was all seniors: John Cochrane, Billy Walsh, Gerry Reardon.”
Fidler: “[Billy Cotter and I] played together since we were 7 years old. I’m a puck carrier, and when you’re a puck carrier, you’ve got to have an outlet. If you don’t have one, you’re going to get hit every time. Cotter just knew exactly where to be when I’d be in trouble. I could saucer a pass 30 feet across the other end of the ice, and I knew he was going to be there. Plus, he had unbelievable speed.”
Pierce: “I was watching a game in the stands, I think it was Arlington-Southie, and when we finally left, I walked out with Jack Parker. He says, ‘Gee, I like Fidler.’ I said, ‘What about Cotter? They’re great together, Jack.’ He ended up taking both of them, and they had a bunch of success.”
Fimiani: “That game [vs. Archbishop Williams] was just back and forth. The Garden was absolutely packed. I think we sold out the Garden again, which was phenomenal. The atmosphere was unbelievable. We had 40 cheerleaders out on the balcony. The balcony was swaying because they were jumping up and down in the Old Boston Garden.”
When Matignon won the state title in 1975, it ushered in an era of special celebrations engineered by Pierce, who, in addition to being the Matignon coach, was also a Boston firefighter. He became the commissioner of the Boston Fire Department in 1991.
Fimiani: “That was the first year we went on the famous fire truck rides.”
Steve Leach, player (1981-84), UNH (1984-86), 15-year NHL career (1986-2000): “Marty dangled that in front of us all the time. Let’s make sure we take a fire engine ride at the end of the year. It was part of the deal. ... We could win, and Marty would order up the fire trucks to come down to the Garden. We’d all jump on the trucks and sirens going and parade around some of the streets of Boston and work our way back to Cambridge to the school. You pull into the school, and there was probably 4,000 people in the front yard going nuts.”
Jerry Fimiani, JV coach (1978-82), assistant coach (1986-2002): “The principal was on top of the bus saying, ‘There’s no school tomorrow!’ It was crazy. Just insane.”
Leach: “I tell people today that this is what we did after we won, and they’re like, ‘You could never do that today. Not in a million years.’”
David Fimiani: “After ‘75, we said, ‘You know what? We could get used to this stuff. We could really get used to this.’ The next year, in ‘76, we ended up losing to Arlington in the Garden. But in ‘77, we smoked everybody. I think we had one loss.”
Pierce: “In ‘77, that was Cotter and Fidler again. What an exciting finish. A full house at Boston Garden — even up in the heavens.”
That finish came against Needham in the Eastern Massachusetts final.
Pierce: “John Chambers was their coach, and it was his last game.”
Fidler: “That’s a big night because you’re nervous. It’s jam-packed. I remember at the beginning of the game, there was a face-off near their end, and I looked up into the crowd. I usually never did it, but there was a timeout and all the aisles were full of people. There was no space. And back then, people would smoke cigarettes in the Garden. Like right above our heads was this whole cloud of smoke from everybody smoking, and I hate cigarette smoke. I remember sitting there ready to take the draw thinking, ‘People can’t even go to the bathroom!’ And I’m looking up at the smoke, and there’s smoke 20 feet above us!”
Pierce: “It was 2-2 entering the third period. You can feel the excitement and the tension. Needham scores again, making it 3-2. Matignon comes back, we score a minute later, and it’s Cotter from Arthur Yeomelakis and Fidler. Still in the third period, time’s ticking, of course, and my son, who was probably 5 or 6, he was on the bench and began to get a little nervous. Needham scored again in the third, making it 4-3 late — and I mean late.”
Fidler: “We were outplaying them, but their goalie got the MVP — that’s how good he played. We were playing good, we just weren’t putting it together.”
David Fimiani: “The funny thing is, Fidler called it. He goes, ‘(Expletive) this, Fim. We’re gonna go win this right now.’”
Fidler: “[Pierce’s] son, young Marty, is on the bench screaming and crying, and I’m like, ‘Oh my God.’ So I said, ‘Marty, we have time left on the clock. We’re going to come back and win this for you!’ I was more just trying to calm him down.”
David Fimiani: “I remember Billy Walsh was sitting in the stands, and he said to me that he was sitting with one of his friends, and he says, ‘They’re gonna win.’ And his friend goes, ‘Yeah, Needham’s gonna win.’ And Walsh goes, ‘No, Matignon is gonna win this. Just watch.’”
Fidler: “We had a minute left in the game. They had a kid playing on me, and right before we took the draw, he said, ‘How’s it feel to lose in front of all your family and friends?’”
Fidler: “He’s jabbing me, and the puck went around to our D just the way we wanted it to. The kid from Needham is looking at me, and I can see the puck going exactly where we wanted it to. The D got it, and he shot it. So I grab [the Needham player] a little bit, and he chops my elbow, sending my stick up. It went right into the puck and into the upper corner of the net. If he didn’t touch me, it wouldn’t have went in.”
Needham took a timeout.
Fidler: “Marty was telling us to play for overtime. As we made our way to the dot, I said to our team, ‘Go out and do the same play, the same exact thing. [Needham] is going to want to go into overtime. I could see by the way [their center] was standing that he was going to go on his backhand to his right defenseman. So I didn’t care because there were 40 seconds left — he was going into his own zone and not trying to win it between my legs and go into our zone. I didn’t put up a resistance, and I let him win it. It went back to his defenseman, who was lined up like 7-to-10 feet from the boards, so I just went up and skated up the boards, and the defenseman ripped a shot that hit me in the stomach.”
David Fimiani: “[Fidler] shot one over to Billy Cotter and Billy put it in the top corner. That was it.”
Jerry Fimiani: “The Garden erupted. It was shaking. I was sitting behind the bench, and I remember standing up and screaming. It was like it was hit by a bolt of lightning.”
Pierce: “I believe [they] described it on the radio as, ‘You should be here to see this: Fidler just did a flip at center ice!’ Just unbelievable. The excitement, the energy that was in that building. It was something to behold. To be the head coach of something like that and come out a winner? Very memorable.”
Fidler: “I took a timeout with some seconds left just so I could go over to their end and give it to the kid who said that stuff to me. I said, ‘Dude, now you’re gonna know how it feels.’ They had to drag me away from his bench because he had his head down, crying.”
Fidler: “Here’s the best feeling I ever had at Matignon. We went back into the locker room and Marty’s not a rah-rah guy. I knew how happy he was, and he was always quiet. The place is going crazy, a kid had my shirt on while getting interviewed by Channel 4 and 5. I just had the lower part of my equipment on. I looked out the door, and Marty is standing against the wall with his right foot up against the wall, smiling like he just won $100 million. It was the best thing we could have given him.”
As much as Pierce may not have been a “rah-rah” guy, he sure loved his pre-postseason game rallies.
Pierce: “I really believed in the psychology of the game and getting the players up and prepared. We had a rally every time they made the tournament. Every single game in the tournament. They were held at the school in the auditorium. The whole student body would come down.”
Leach: “We’d go in there, and the place was packed. It was part of the culture, the spirit of the school that we had those rallies. It was unreal.”
David Fimiani: “You felt like a freaking professional hockey player.”
Shawn McEachern, player (1985-88), BU (1988-91), 14-year NHL career (1991-2006): “Marty would give a speech in front of the whole school, and everybody would be riled up.”
Pierce: “I don’t remember the year, and I don’t remember how we finished, but we had a nun that was very friendly with Bobby Orr. She got friendly with the family, and he lived where the news were downtown. She says, ‘Would you mind if I asked him to come to the rally?’ I said sure. He came, and he spoke, and I had to speak after him. That was tough. They went crazy because he had just come up, he was a young guy. He was a star then. I said, ‘Having Bobby here is such an honor. I know we have a jersey that would fit you, Bobby, and I know it wouldn’t take long to get your skates out of the locker room.’ He laughed. He was a great guy.”
From 1980-84, Matignon won five straight state championships. It started with a 5-3 win over St. John’s Prep in 1980.
Pierce: “Three goals by Matignon in the second period, none for them. My guys must’ve said, ‘Oh, we’re riding pretty good here!’ St. John’s Prep scored one at the 6:07 mark, then they scored another. Bobby Carpenter was playing for them. He went on to the Washington Capitals. He was the ‘can’t-miss kid.’ They scored two right away, and then we came back and scored one to make it 4-2. Carpenter scored again near the end to make it 4-3, so it got a little hairy.”
Pierce: “Of course, I wish [Carpenter] played for us. One time he went by us at the arena down in Danvers as if none of my players were even in front of him. I [yelled] and broke my hand after hitting the plexiglass. The doctor at the rink, his son was in the goal. He comes over and says, ‘It looks like a boxer’s fracture. It won’t be anything serious. Keep it in a bucket of water. You can still coach.’ So I finished the game.”
The next big star for Pierce was Arthur Yeomelakis in 1982.
Jerry Fimiani: “He was just programmed. The kid listened intently. He went out there and did the job. And there was no BS-ing.”
Pierce: “If I remember right, [Yeomelakis] got the winner in the Eastern Mass. final. Acton Boxboro was up 1-0 on a power play in the first period. No scoring in the second. In the third period, Matignon scored: Darryl McDonald from Yeomelakis and John McCarthy. McCarthy was a great player. He was on four of the Eastern Mass. championship teams.”
Pierce: “Tie game going into overtime. McCarthy’s taking the draw in the offensive zone. I think it was 2:14 of overtime, McCarthy won the draw to Yeomelakis, who was in the slot, shot it right away. Game over. Didn’t last long.”
Leach: “I went home from that, and I’m like, ‘I’ve got to go to this school. I’ve got to figure out a way to go and play here.’”
Pierce: “Acton Boxboro had Tom Barrasso in net. That’s who we had to beat. We took 34 shots on him.”
Barrasso would be drafted that June by the Buffalo Sabres.
McEachern: “He played 20 games the year before for Acton Boxboro, then went to the NHL and won the Calder and the Vezina [in his rookie season]. And he lost in the finals to Matignon. As far as hockey history goes in Massachusetts, those years were insane.”
Leach: “Back then, there weren’t so many splintered factions of the game. There was prep school hockey. And then there was Matignon and regular, scholastic schoolboy hockey throughout the state. Juniors weren’t in play. There weren’t a lot of options but to play high school hockey or go to prep school. That was amplified in the state tournament — and that state tournament drew a great deal of attention. In the Catholic Conference, there might be 14 Division 1 players in that particular game. The hockey was really good. And to go see that live for the first time, where it was a packed house in the old Boston Garden, was a really neat experience.”
The fire trucks and pre-playoff rallies weren't the only tradition that developed at Matignon in those days.
Leach: "We’d go over a local kid’s house in Cambridge and give each other Mohawks. The freshmen always went first to test it out. We would only get the Mohawks if we went to the Garden. We always went, so we were always getting Mohawks. It was just an awesome time.”
Pierce: “In ‘83, we beat St. John’s Prep in the state final, 5-4. Steve Leach got the winner. Great kid. A great career in the NHL and the Olympics. That was a thriller.”
After winning again in 1984, Matignon failed to qualify for the tournament in 1985. They were moved to Division 2 for the 1985-86 season.
Jerry Fimiani: “That was heartbreaking to get put down in Division 2. The MIAA had meetings, and they thought that the school size had something to do with it.”
Pierce: “Shawn McEachern was on the scene then.”
McEachern: “We were so disappointed in 1984-85. We didn’t make the states that year. And then my sophomore year, we lost to Austin Prep, and Tom Fitzgerald was the top player.”
Jerry Fimiani: “McEachern was just above and beyond. He had more speed than most kids, and his ability and his competitiveness were huge.”
MacEachern: “Rob Kelley was my linemate. He got drafted by Montreal and ended up playing at Merrimack.”
Jerry Fimiani: “I’ll always remember this. We would play preseason games. We’d go to Belmont Hill, St. Sebastian’s, Thayer Academy. Thayer had Jeremy Roenick and Tony Amonte. We had McEachern and a kid named Jimmy Sullivan, and it was 3-3. We played in Hingham at Pilgrim Arena. The last row of the stands across from the benches were all trench coats and notebooks. Every pro scout, every college scout was there. It was just amazing. Roenick and Amonte were unbelievable. McEachern was right there with them. All three of them ended up in the pros. That shows you how good the talent was back then. The place was packed, and it was just a scrimmage. It was up and down, up and down, up and down. It was something I never forgot because the exposure that day was incredible.”
Matignon got back on top, winning the 1987 Eastern Mass. final over Canton and taking down St. John’s Shrewsbury in the state final.
McEachern: “It was fun to be back on top.”
After scoring 29 goals and posting 57 points in 16 games in 1986-87, McEachern was drafted by the Pittsburgh Penguins in the sixth round (110th overall).
McEachern: “Back then, I was washing my car in the front yard. The coach of Maine or one of the schools that was recruiting me called and said, ‘Hey, you got drafted by Pittsburgh.’ It wasn’t on TV. ”
Pierce: "He got a Stanley Cup playing with Mario Lemieux.”
McEachern returned for his senior season in 1987-88 and scored 52 goals and posted 92 points in 22 games.
Pierce: “1988: The only undefeated team we had.”
McEachern: “It was a good year.”
Pierce: “We played Boston Latin and won, 11-1. Arlington Catholic in the semis, 12-2. 10-3 against Dom Savio. We beat St. John’s Shrewsbury in the semis, 8-2. We beat Duxbury, 9-5. That was Division 2. That’s why the scores were like that.”
Matignon was moved back to Division 1 in 1990 and won a state championship in 1993.
Jerry Fimiani: “Jerry Keefe was a junior. He was a superstar. He left and went to Cushing. I remember him feeding this kid Louie Caponey. Marty saw that there was a little chemistry between him and Louie. I don’t know if Louie ever played anymore after, but he got like two or three goals in the [Eastern Mass. final]. Keefe just kept feeding him, and that kid kept on pumping them in. He probably had the game of his life.”
The state title in 1993 was Matignon’s last. Pierce would go on to coach the school for 11 more years.
Leach: “I was fortunate to play a long time in the NHL. I traveled all over the world to play, played in the Olympics, but that time was just a super special time for me and the kids that played there.”
David Fimiani: “I don’t think I spoke to Marty over the four years. I was scared to death of him. We were coming back from playing Hudson in the finals my senior year, and I’m sitting on the bus. We’ve just won, I’m decompressing and all of a sudden Marty comes over, and he sits next to me. I’m going, ‘What does he want?’ He goes, ‘What do you think, Dave?’ I’m going, ‘What do you mean what do I think? You’re talking to me?’”
McEachern: “He was a legendary coach by the time I got to Matignon. He would come in the locker room before every game and he would give a speech that was insane. He would get guys so up. I played with Ted Donato and Joe Sacco my junior and senior year for Team Massachusetts, and Marty was coaching the team. He gave one of his speeches, and all the guys were like, ‘Oh my God, this guy is insane with how intense he is.’ If you watch the games that Matignon played, guys played hard — like everything was on the line.”
David Fimiani: “He never yelled at anybody in terms of berating them. Never. He’d get pissed, but he’d never say, ‘Hey Fimiani, you suck.’ And I’ve heard that from coaches before. It was always ‘we’ with him. We need to do this better. He didn’t point out your mistake. He would say, ‘We made a mistake,’ and you knew it was you but you weren’t embarrassed by it."
McEachern: “I think the difference with Marty, too, was those ‘80s teams had all those guys who played Division 1 (in college). But there are guys that maybe you wouldn’t know the names of that didn’t go on to play Division 1, but they were really good high school hockey players, and Marty got the most out of them. They played with so much intensity, and it meant so much to them. Marty got a lot out of guys.”
Jerry Fimiani: “It does my heart great when I see [former players] succeed. I’ve seen several of them become state cops. A handful became firemen. A handful of them were pro hockey players. They were just good people and good citizens. They ended up living a good, clean life. What more can you ask for? It’s a sport, but at the end of the day, you’ve got to produce good people.”
McEachern: “You always wanted to grow up and win a state title. That was always the goal. I know other kids growing up wanted to play in the Beanpot. I wanted to go to Matignon and play for Marty.”
