Dennis Aldrich made a habit of taking his Canton High girls hockey team to the biggest stage.
So it's fitting that he leaves off one final appearance at TD Garden.
Aldrich announced his retirement last Friday, ending a wildly successful 10-year run highlighted by the Bulldogs advancing to four of the last five Division2 state championship games. They came up short in their last trip, losing 2-1 in overtime to Algonquin in this year's final on March 20, but Aldrich said he wouldn't trade the experience for anything.
"It's kind of cool if I do retire now – and it makes me smile when I thought of it – because my last game coaching was on the Boston Bruins bench," he said.
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Aldrich, 61, went131-59-25 overall at Canton. Over the past six seasons, the Bulldogs were 89-24-19, including a 15-4 mark in the playoffs. Alongwith this year's near-miss, Canton lost state finals in 2017 (5-2 to Notre Dame Academy) and 2018 (1-0 to Wellesley) and shared the 2020 crown with Wellesley when the pandemic forced the MIAA to cancel all hockey and basketball state finals on the eve of championship weekend.
There were no MIAA playoffs in the winter of 2020-21.
"What else can I accomplish?" said Aldrich, whose program won five MIAA sportsmanship awards during his tenure. "It's time for me (to step down). It's just time. Let someone else take the reins of a very strong program."
Canton is loaded with talent, but Aldrich will be a tough act for the next coach to follow.
"Quite a ride," assistant coach Nick Maffeo said of his boss' run.
"Amazing coach, amazing guy," agreed fellow assistant Jack Koen. "Did more for the community than just the hockey team. It's tough shoes to fill. He's built a program that's been amazing. He started with nothing and now four Garden appearances in the last five years."
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Star goaltender Carolyn Durand, who led the Bulldogs to a shared state crown as a freshman in 2020 (Canton finished 19-1-4) and will be back for one last post-Aldrich season next year, said he was extremely helpful to her career, especially this past season when a broken ankle sidelined her for the first four games of the season. Canton started 1-3 without her but went 17-4 the rest of the way, allowing only 23 goals over those last 21 games.
"He was an awesome coach," Durand said. "I've had him since I was in youth hockey. Especially this year with my broken ankle, he's helped me in a lot of ways mentally. Not just physically pushing me but he helped me realize how mentally tough I am to get back into the game after four weeks of not doing anything. He's a great role model. Just an awesome guy."
Aldrich played at Canton High and started his coaching career as an assistant under his former coach, Joe Roach.
"I saw there was an opening, I knocked on his door and said, 'Would you consider me helping you?'" Aldrich recalled. "He all but hugged me. Joe wasn't a real huggy guy, but he said, 'You just answered my prayers.' I was lucky to stay with him for six years and then I moved over to Stoughton and coached with Dan Mark, who was very instrumental in my coaching. I worked with him and his boys team for seven years. And I just finished up 10 years with the (Canton) girls.
"I've been very fortunate to be around a lot of coaches who were teachers. I learned a lot from them."
His assistants – a group that includes Courtney Caulfield, who left a few years ago– say they learned a lot from him, too. Maffeo particularly liked how Aldrich would let him and Koen design and run certain practices during the season.
"As a coach, that helps further develop your knowledge and skills because we're doing research on drills and techniques," Maffeo said. "But it also give the girls a different voice and a change of pace."
Durand agreed, noting, "It broke it up, kept it fresh and new so that we as a team could engage more. ... The way the team responded to each of those practices made us better. We got to practice different styles, not just do the same thing every day."
Aldrich's teams missed the playoffs only once, in his second season, when a challenging schedule led to a 3-16-1 finish in 2013-14. Three years later, the Bulldogs were in the state final for the first time.
"We took some lumps at the beginning of our tenure there, particularly our second season," Maffeo said. "The schedule was completely loaded, but slowly but surely the girls got used to fierce competition."
Maffeo's two daughters – Alexa and Olivia – played under Aldrich, as did Koen's older daughter, Audrey, who will be a senior next season. Aldrich also got to coach his older daughter, Meg, now a sophom*ore at UConn. His younger daughter, Maya, attends Norfolk Aggie.
In the early days of his Canton gig, Aldrich remembersMeg and Alexa Maffeo counting shots for the varsity scorekeeper while Maya served as the stick girl.
"But then Meg graduated and Maya went to a different school and the dynamics of the job changed," he said. "... The stuff I'm missing out on with (my own daughters now was bothering me)."
Saying goodbye to the current Bulldogs was difficult, he admitted. "You love the girls that you're there with and it's tough to leave because there are so many girls who mean so much to me right now," he said. "But I can't see a year that that wouldn't be the case, so there's probably no great time (to retire)."
Still, Aldrich won't be straying too far from the program. As the maintenance supervisor for the Canton Parks and Recreation Department, he's in charge of the Bulldogs' home rink – Canton Metropolis, which has reopened after being shuttered for a few years when the roof collapsed during a storm.
"There were some tears on both sides, certainly," Aldrich said, recalling how he broke the news of his retirement to his captains. "But I told them they're not getting rid of me. If they're out there (on the ice) and they hear someone pounding on the glass, there's no need to look; it'll be me."
Durand is OK with that.
"I know that I can always count on him to point out something that I could do better or give me a pat on the back when I did something well," she said. "Just seeing a friendly face around the rink will be nice and knowing that there's someone who cares so much about our team there. He comes to my lacrosse games still. Knowing he's there, it's always nice."
