MARBLEHEAD — Yes, it does look like Toot Cahoon's ninth season has a lot of promise. The UMass Amherst hockey coach has 22 of 28 players returning, there's good balance and his recruiting prospects are all set for 2008-09. His staff is now working on 2009-10.
"We were ranked as high as No. 4 (nationally) last season and skidded some. We lost six one-goal games," Cahoon said.
Then came some words of caution.
"We've got an exhibition against New Brunswick and after that we're looking at Michigan State and North Dakota in our tournament," Cahoon said. "We should do alright."
His appearance at the Marblehead Community Center was on behalf on the Visiting Nurses' Association Care Network and Hospice at the Men's Council of Aging and if there were 300 seats available, instead of just 80, then all 300 would have been reserved. The 80 tickets went quickly.
This town loves Donald "Toot" Cahoon.
Dr. Timothy Johnson and retired TV anchorman Bob Lobel have spoken to the Council and it was announced another TV celebrity, Susan Warnick, was next in the lineup, but there can be no bigger attraction than Cahoon in this town.
He's the kid who moved from Swampscott to Marblehead after eighth grade and became a hockey legend first at Marblehead, then at BU. Now he's a high-profile 59-year-old collegiate coach, one who should be paying dues to the carpenter's union for all the building and rebuilding he's done at places like Lehigh, Princeton and UMass.
You talk about starting from the ground up. One of the hidden gems in Salem High's program is that Cahoon served one year as a Witches' assistant under Peter Downey.
"I'd say half of these people here knew my father, whom everybody called 'Jersey.' I see six old teammates and many others whom I've known all my life, people who have supported me for years and years. I love every one of them," Cahoon said.
He, however, wasn't one dimensional. He excelled in baseball and football as well. He was some kind of quarterback. He could do it all.
An ex-football teammate in 1965, Bill James, a guard, now the superintendent of the town's cemetery department, couldn't stay yesterday, but left a DVD of several '65 games, including the 26-20 win at Gloucester that is listed in the Gridiron Club's history book as Marblehead's best comeback ever.
"We were down 20-12 with two minutes left and won it on Toot's 30-yard pass to the late Bobby Blood," James recalled. "There had to be 6-8,000 people there. I can still see Blood zig-zagging around the defenders, untouched."
Cahoon was a low-key type of person, James said. "No big head. Never bragged. The perfect attitude." James secured the DVD from the old high school before it was shut down.
Peter Brown, another former teammate, was Toot's best friend.
"He was a special athlete. We dated together and stuff, but he was a little crazy, too," Brown, a retired Air Force Lt. Colonel, laughed. Crazy? "We played pranks on each other. Let's leave it at that," Brown pleaded.
Nearby, Cliff Brown, 78, who played on the first Marblehead hockey team in 1948, came forth to offer his opinion on Toot. "The greatest of that hockey area were Toot and Tippy Johnson of Lynn English," the one-time Brown-Merrill car dealer said.
David Rodgers, from the mid-1960s, too, and now a Marblehead baseball assistant, said the hockey crowds got fired up the instant Toot hit the ice.
"The fans at the Lynn Arena used to go nuts as soon as they saw him go over the boards and he usually got a goal in his first shift," Rodgers said.
Cahoon, 59, has the charisma to light up a room, and so it was on this occasion, bringing back a lot of rich memories.
"Being around Toot is like being around the mayor," veteran MHS sports observer Joe Brophy reamed.
It's a good thing Toot didn't hear him. He would have been embarrassed.
Vincent McGrath, 74, a Marblehead High history teacher who didn't have Toot in class, but knew him quite well, was proud to recall that Toot always had his head on straight.
"He was a young star athlete, but a gentleman, very considerate of others," McGrath said. "He was always smiling. I was impressed with his skating. He could play a great game on Thursday, come to school the next day and you'd never know he was so great the night before. That was Toot."
Fred Haskell, one of Toot's closest friends from their playing days, said there was only one other area skater in the mid-1960s who could compare to Toot and that was Lynn Classical's Dwight Ware, who went on to Harvard.
Haskell and Cahoon were both members of father Bill Haskell's two-time USA champion Marblehead Maroons.
"He was younger and a typical kid. He did some stupid things, just to get attention," Haskell said behind a grin.
It was, as Toot said, a different era.
"I was probably in fourth grade when I'd go skate with Ty Anderson's Swampscott High team. You can't do that stuff today. Larry Pleau and Jim Dakin were on the Lynn Atlantics when I was on the team and the same kids were on the Marblehead Maroons," Toot said.
He spoke a full hour, non stop, and absolutely scored a hat trick in his delivery.
