North Haven's Marottolo has Sacred Heart seeking new frontiers

Click here to read Don Harrison's story on the New Haven Register's website.

Timing, as the peerless wordsmith William Shakespeare famously noted, is everything.

In the summer of 1993, C.J. Marottolo was weighing assistant coaching offers from Yale and Sacred Heart. He had played and coached hockey in France and had already put in two years as a graduate assistant coach at Trinity.

He was aware that Yale’s head coach, Tim Taylor, was a legend in the sport. But Marottolo already had a relationship with the man who would lead Sacred Heart in its debut season on the ice, the late Peter Downey.

“Peter gave me my start,” said the 43-year-old North Haven native, who played scholastically at Choate Rosemary Hall and then at Northeastern. “He worked at my dad’s hockey school, and when he opened his own hockey school, I worked there for several summers.”

(Marottolo’s father, the late Carl Marottolo, was a teacher and administrator in the New Haven school system, but hockey was his passion. He was a co-founder of the Yale Youth Hockey program.)

Eventually, C.J. opted for the brand recognition of Yale, and that’s where he would remain for 15 seasons, eventually becoming associate head coach to Taylor and his successor, Keith Allain.

End of story? No, just the beginning.

Last September, C.J. (for Carl Joseph) Marottolo learned from a hockey Web site that another coaching position at Sacred Heart was open — head coach. Shaun Hannah, who had built the Pioneer program into one commanding respect at the Division I level, resigned abruptly after 13 seasons, citing the need to assess his personal life following the death of a younger brother in an accident.

This time, Marottolo stepped forward and, within a matter of days, was appointed Sacred Heart’s fourth head coach. He had just two weeks to prepare the team for its opening game.

“When I took the job, I didn’t know what to expect,” Marottolo explained. “I told the guys: ‘You’ve got a clean slate. You can write your own story.’”

The opening chapter wasn’t what he had in mind, though. The Pioneers’ record stood — or perhaps tottered — at 3 wins, 9 losses, 2 ties entering the final game prior to the holiday break.

Still, Marottolo remained hopeful.

“I felt they were still trying to get to know me and I was getting to know them,” he said. “I never got discouraged. I knew at some point we’d break through.”

“Break through” may be understating what has transpired. Using the 4-1 triumph over Dartmouth on Dec. 13 as a launching pad, Sacred Heart has played inspired, winning hockey in the New Year. In fact, the Pioneers did not lose in January, winning nine times and tying twice. The team even swept a pair of games against Connecticut at Storrs, despite the absence of its new head coach.

“I had Bell’s palsy ... it came as a virus, and I spent Saturday night in St. Raphael’s Hospital,” Marottolo related. “But thanks to (assistant coaches) Lou Santini and Scott McDougall, we didn’t miss a beat at UConn.”

A 5-2 home loss to league-leading RIT on Feb. 5 ended what had become the longest unbeaten streak in the country, but Sacred Heart then reeled off five more victories and moved into second place in the AHA. Lo and behold, the Pioneers began to receive votes in the national collegiate poll.

“We were very excited about that,” Marottolo said.

Don Cook, the university’s executive director of athletics, credits the team’s senior leadership for “pulling together and showing maturity under stress” during the uncertain period between Hannah’s departure and Marottolo’s arrival. Two of these upperclassmen, Nick Johnson and Dave Jarman, have reached new heights in productivity this season and are among the NCAA leaders in three major categories.

Johnson, a 5-foot-11, 200-pound left wing from Windsor, is tied with Yale’s Broc Little for the lead in goals (25) and game-winning goals (7). He’s already surpassed the SHU record of 23 goals, set by Aaron Foust in 1994-95.

“Great shot, great release,” Marottolo says of Johnson.

Sports Illustrated took note of Johnson’s accomplishments, including his selection as January’s Division I player of the month by the Hockey Commissioner’s Association, and placed him in its March 1 “Faces in the Crowd.”

Jarman, from Toronto, has accumulated a school-record 34 assists thus far (previous high 31, Pierre-Luc O’Brien, 2005-06) and trails only Maine’s Gustav Nyquist, who has 37.

Another important component is freshman goalie Steven Legatto. After enduring some early travails, the young man from Kelowna, British Columbia, moved into Sacred Heart’s starting lineup early in the season and was named January’s D-I goalie of the month.

On Friday night, Marottolo’s Pioneers (18-12-4) will play host to Holy Cross (12-17-6) in the opener of the best-of-three Atlantic Hockey Association playoff quarterfinals at the Milford Ice Pavilion. If form holds true — the Pioneers defeated the Crusaders in three of their four regular-season meetings — Sacred Heart will advance to the AHA semifinals March 19 in Rochester, N.Y.

“Out of the four years I’ve been here, this is the most confident I’ve been heading into the playoffs,” Jarman said.