The second oldest of 10 children, Mike Gilligan always had a firm grasp on family values.
When the former Beverly High and Salem State hockey star decided to try his hand at coaching, he brought that heightened sense of kinship with him. As a result, every team lucky enough to call Gilligan as its skipper benefited greatly.
For his years of dedication to the sport, the Commonwealth honored one of the most respected men to ever lace up a pair of skates on the North Shore as the exceedingly humble Gilligan was recently inducted into the Massachusetts Hockey Hall of Fame.
"It was a surprise. I certainly didn't get in because of my playing (days)," joked the man who cemented himself as an elite Eastern College Athletic Conference coach with 19 seasons behind the University of Vermont bench.
"It was an honor, for sure. It made me think a lot about the guys who gave me a chance to coach: George Kinnaly at Peabody High and Billy Gillis, the athletic director at Salem State, gave me my big break. (Gillis) had some trust in me — and that ended up as a six-year (coaching) stint."
When Gilligan stepped down from his head coaching position with the Vermont Catamounts in 2003, his resume carried more weight than the Spruce Goose. With a record of 419-348-49 over 26 years, Gilligan was sixth among active coaches in career wins and coached in his 800th career game in 2003. Only Len Ceglarski, Jerry York and Jack Riley have more wins in ECAC annals.
The third head coach in program history, Gilligan honed the talents of six all-Americans in his time at UVM including Eric Perrin, Martin St. Louis, Christian Soucy, Aaron Miller, Kyle McDonough and current Bruins all-star goaltender and former Vezina Trophy winner Tim Thomas. Perrin and Soucy were both ECAC rookies of the year with Perrin and St. Louis (now a star with the Tampa Bay Lightning) going on to win ECAC player of the year honors. All six went on to play hockey professionally, and all but McDonough played in the NHL.
"Growing up in a big family competing all the time you learn to get along, and I think that helped me with the team members and other coaches. One thing you see now in organized sports is entitlement; that's something we never thought about," explained Gilligan. "We were so happy (as kids) to get a pair of skates on Christmas.
"Our parents let us do what we wanted, and we chose to become better skaters. Most of what we learned was from each other. That stuff is missing now; more kids seem to be driven into it."
Unselfish nature
In his time with the UVM program, Gilligan broke more ground than a jackhammer.
At first glance, his career mark with the Catamounts (279-289-46) may not look overly impressive. But in reality, Gilligan brought UVM hockey to levels many at the school had only dreamt about.
Under his guidance, the 1987-88 Catamounts became the first group in school history to compete in the NCAA tournament after advancing to the ECAC Championships at the old Boston Garden. Although his team bowed out to Bowling Green in the NCAAs, Gilligan's efforts earned him co-Coach of the Year honors in the ECAC.
"Mike's a continuation of what our mother (Noonie) and father (Bill) were about; just very caring. And he continues that throughout hockey," said brother Bobby Gilligan, who is the current head coach of the Beverly High boys hockey team.
"Those (family values) were something he was brought up with; it just comes natural to Mike. He's used to being very unselfish, and that's what has made him so successful. People want to play for him because that (unselfish nature) is what he's all about."
During the 1995-96 and 1996-97 college seasons, the Catamounts experienced back-to-back NCAA tournament appearances and consecutive 20-win seasons. Led by St. Louis, Perrin and Thomas, UVM finished 27-7-4 in 1996 for the school's winningest campaign in its Division 1 tenure. The Catamounts captured their first-ever ECAC title and achieved the school's first-ever No. 1 ranking nationally during the 1996-97 campaign.
In 2008, Gilligan was honored by the New England Hockey Writers Association with the Parker-York Award for his lifetime contribution to hockey in the region.
The following year, he was diagnosed with having neck and head cancer. But through aggressive chemotherapy and treatment, Gilligan is now cancer free.
Establishing a winning culture
A standout defenseman for Salem State, Gilligan became the first player in team history to earn All-America honors, doing so in the two seasons in which he was the team's captain. Gilligan, who was inducted into the Salem State Athletic Hall of Fame in 1986, was a member of the 1972 U.S. Team at the World University Games in Lake Placid, N.Y.
"He was the Bobby Orr of Beverly. At Salem State they said he was the best they had in years, and around the North Shore he was way ahead of his time," said Bobby Gilligan.
"He would have been a (NHL) draft pick if it was 20 years later, but he decided to get into coaching. People talk about my brothers Billy or Stuart being the best (in the family), but things in Mike's game we could never get. He had the whole nine yards."
Gilligan returned to Salem State to coach the team in 1975 after getting his feet wet as an assistant coach with Peabody High under Kinnaly, the team's head coach. When he Salem State left six years later to join Tim Taylor's staff at Yale, Gilligan had amassed a 128-48-2 record, making him the most successful Viking since Leif Ericson.
Under Gilligan's leadership, Salem State was no stranger to challenging teams outside of its own weight class as exhibition bouts with Division 1 teams Northeastern and Boston University teams sometimes ended in the Vikings' favor. The bigwigs in the college hockey community started to take notice of the man who seemed impervious to defeat.
"Tim Taylor saw me at the Beanpot and told me Ben Smith (his assistant coach from Gloucester) was leaving to go to BU. He told me he heard I could win games," said Gilligan. "That was the biggest thing; we won games (at Salem State). We had 20-plus wins every year, and that was the turning point in my career where people in the hockey world started to say 'I don't know what it is he's doing, but I know he is winning games'."
Players always come first
What makes his triumphant tenure even more impressive is the fact that for Gilligan, winning wasn't everything — or even the only thing, it was simply something, and it took a backseat to the best interests of his players.
So when it came to recruiting, no one garnered more trust and respect from prospective players and parents than the hockey's ambassador from the North Shore.
One of the closest of those friends and former high school teammate, Dan Kausel, describes Gilligan's recruitment methods.
"Mike is one of these guys who shoots right from the hip, you always know where you stand with him. There are so many good hockey players and scholarships to go around, he'll watch a kid play and in a matter of an hour he knows if he is D-1 material; if he'lll get a scholarship or if he'll sit on bench; and he gives it to the parents straight," said Kausel.
"The parents trust their kids with Mike because he doesn't tell you one thing and do another. He may say, 'Look, he needs one more year and he belongs at this prep school'. He wants to do what is right for that particular skater, always."
Once he had you, like any good family man, Gilligan never let you out of his sight. Whether it was in-season or not, Gilligan kept a close eye on what his players were doing at all times.
"It was his players that always came first; he put himself out there last," explained Kausel. "He always had a good sense of what was going on, he had a lot of contacts throughout (Burlington, Vt.). He had other sets of eyes on his players so if he heard about something, he could get the kids home and get them there safe.
"If you could have anyone in your corner, (Gilligan) would be the fellow you'd want."
New game, same old Gilly
At the time of his retirement in 2003, Gilligan wasn't quite ready to leave hockey all together. So he decided to try a different coaching path, signing on as an assistant coach with the U.S. Women's National Team.
There, he was a part of the Select Team that won the gold medal in the 2003 Women's Four Nations Cup and the U.S. Women's National Team that took gold at the 2005 International Ice Hockey Federation Women's World Championship. The U.S. Women's Olympic Team's bronze medal run at the 2006 Olympic Games in Torino, Italy also had Gilligan behind the bench.
It was a whole new hockey climate for Gilligan, whose methods and eye for talent clearly were not bound by gender. After two-and-a-half years on the national scene, Gilligan returned to Gutterson Fieldhouse joining Tim Bothwell and the rest of the Catamount women's team staff in the summer of 2006.
"Ben Smith, the women's Olympic coach, kept me in coaching. He asked me if I wanted to try women's (hockey) and I really enjoyed it," explained Gilligan. "It's turned into something up at UVM where I've been recruiting the last five years. Originally it started in fundraising, but now I'm on the ice almost every day now and I do some recruiting on the road. My gut still feels the same way before a game and after the game."
Gilligan also talked bout the differences between the men and women's games and how he has approached the new challenge.
"They listen to you probably more closely than the guys. They really want to learn and tactically, women play a more sound game than the guys. It's not so nasty or physical and reminds me of the way boys' and mens' hockey was 25 to 30 years ago — more skill based," said Gilligan. "With the women, you can't try to force it to them and you can't be too vocal. Thank heavens they didn't meet me 30 years ago, I'm a bit nicer now."
