Michael Breen
SHS Class of 1976
SHS Boys Varsity Assistant Coach 1997 - 1999
SHS Boys Varsity Head Coach 2000 - 2018
Bill Conboy: “What people need to understand about this guy – Mike Breen – is that as great a coach as he was, he was an even better player. And as great a player as he was, he’s an even better man.”
George Stanley: “Michael Breen, on open ice with the puck, was untouchable. Every time he stepped into a rink, he was the best player in the building. He would never admit it, but he shouldn’t have to because anyone who saw him play in his prime knows how skilled he was.”
The game of hockey in the town of Scituate has been greatly enhanced by, and will be forever indebted to, this very special individual. Mike Breen is not unfamiliar to anyone who has either played hockey in Scituate or has had a son, grandson, daughter, or granddaughter play the game, but his easygoing demeanor belies an intensity that his oldest friends swear is lurking somewhere deep within. Michael Breen is one of those rare athletes who forged skill with passion playing a sport he loved and, in doing so, made everyone around him better. To this day, his former teammates speak about him with a reverence that’s unmistakably genuine, a little envious, and always respectful.
Appropriately, Mike has friendships reaching back five decades due to his unique ability to wrap that intensity beneath layers of loyalty and self-confidence that those who know him best envy him for. But they love him because he was their teammate, and teammates in this game have an unbreakable bond that holds on for far longer than anyone expects it to. To the rest of us, those who never played hockey with him, we’ll just have to gratefully accept that we have yet to meet anyone more deserving of his reputation as a man of character and skill than Michael Breen.
Like many of his peers taking up the game of hockey, Mike grew up in North Scituate on Mordecai Lincoln Road. When he was young, he skated on nearby Hunter’s pond, Greenbush pond, and Musquashicut pond. While not showing much of an interest in other sports, Mike worked on his skating and hockey skills year-round once the Cohasset Winter Garden opened right up Route 3A. Fortunately for Mike, the rink was built by his grandfather and operated by his dad Jim and his uncles Peter and Ed. He spent countless hours at the rink and his skills developed quickly.
Mike remembers instructional skating programs starting up almost as soon as the rink was completed: “Charlie Hoar, Michael Hoar’s father, was one of my earliest instructors. Peter Cooney, Sr. was also an instructor then as was Boonie Dillon, Bobby’s father. They had a real passion for hockey. A real love for the game of hockey. I think that’s where I picked it up, from guys like them. They were excellent skaters themselves and they took the time to teach me and the other kids in my program the fundamentals of skating.
“Of course, Ed Taylor was very important to me. He had a big influence on me growing up. He was tough but a good guy. He emphasized skating skills. You couldn’t get a puck to play with before you learned how to skate. Mr. Taylor made sure of that. I went through the Scituate Braves program almost as soon as it started. I had coaches like Ed Taylor, Marshall Litchfield, and Drew Higgins. They were all big influences on me. I played with guys like Sean Coady, David Silk, Robbie Griffin, and Bobby Ferriter. Bobby was from from Hull. He was a great hockey player and a big star at Boston College. Broke all sorts of records there. His son played for me on the 2007 Championship team. There are many more that I’m forgetting.
“I went to Thayer Academy my freshman year of high school then transferred to Scituate High. I made the varsity my sophomore year and played defense. I think Robbie Griffin was my defensive partner that year. Paul Johnson was the coach and let us play. I liked Coach Johnson. I think he knew right away that I could handle the puck with confidence.
“We had a very good high school hockey team in 1975-76, my senior year. I felt before that season that we could be pretty good. After a slow start, we won the Old Colony League, but we found out quickly that there were many more teams outside of the OCL that were as good as or even better than we were. Our next game was against Avon at the old Ridge Arena in Braintree. We knew a win against this team would punch our ticket to the state tournament at the Boston Garden. We came back from one goal down to tie it, then poured it on with four goals in the third period.
“This was the old Garden, of course, and just being there was unbelievable. We got a team photo on top of the ‘B’ at center ice. There were buses full of our friends and parents that came in for that game. I can still remember how big the locker rooms were. Much bigger than I had ever been in up until that point. The ice surface felt bigger, but it was really just the same size as all the other rinks we played. We ended up losing to Acton-Boxboro in that game. Must have been the Division II semi-finals. They were just coming at us in waves. We couldn’t keep up with them.
“After the season ended, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do next but I got a call from someone offering a tryout with the Sherbrooke Castors of the Quebec Junior Hockey League. I also met with Fernie Flaman, the head coach at Northeastern University, around this time. He offered me a nice opportunity to play hockey at N.U., but I figured Major Juniors was a better choice for me. I left a good deal on the table from Fernie, but I joined Sherbrooke as a walk-on and we ended up winning the league championship that year. We went to the Memorial Cup, the Canadian National Junior Hockey Championship, but lost. I played with Ricky Vaive that year. He had a great career in the NHL. Ended up as a captain for the Toronto Maple Leafs. First 50-goal scorer for them.
“I next played in the International League with the Flint (MI) Generals. Played a full season there. I was excited because there were no helmets in that league then. I liked that I didn’t have to wear a helmet. But I had a lot of fights. I had good balance on skates. That’s probably why the coach of that team put me in so many fights. I think I had 300+ penalty minutes that year. Almost all of them from fighting.
“The next year I was offered a tryout with the Buffalo Sabres. I’m two years out of high school and I’m in the Buffalo locker room sitting between Jerry Korab and Jim Schoenfeld. Both defensemen. Buffalo was loaded with defensemen but I made the team and was offered a contract. They sent me to the Hershey Bears, their minor league affiliate. The next season I played with the Rochester Americans when the Sabres moved the Bears there. I played with Freddie Stanfield and Dave Schultz that year.
“I played for a few more years in Flint and Rochester. Then I went to the Atlantic Coast Hockey League. There was a team in the ACHL down the Cape that I played for. After another investor in that team dropped out, Vince McMahon of the WWF and then-owner of the Cape Cod Coliseum, bought the franchise. After my hockey career ended, I worked for McMahon in the WWF as a referee for five years.”
Michael Breen is on the short list of those very talented players who later in life returned to his hometown to coach the sport of hockey at his own high school. Like Paul Johnson and Bill McKeever before him, Mike took to coaching as a way of paying it forward. Coaching is obviously a huge time commitment, but if you’re patient, you’re paid back in spades by the lives you improve, the relationships you develop, and the personal connections that remain with you for the rest of your life.
Here's Mike on his early years coaching: “I should say a few things about Garrett Reagan. I’m a couple of years into coaching and I have good teams but we’re not getting anywhere. I asked Garrett if I could come by his house and talk to him for a bit. [Garrett Reagan had a long career as head hockey coach at Hingham High School. He had 400 wins and 3 state titles, and is enshrined in the Massachusetts Hockey Hall of Fame.] He asks me what’s wrong and I tell him we’re just not getting it done. He asks, ‘What’s your breakout?’ and I tell him this, this, this, and then this. He asks, ‘What’s your forecheck?’ and I tell him this, this, this, and then this. He says, ‘No, no, no, no. Stop right there. There is no breakout. If there’s an open man coming out of your end, just hit the man. If you can’t find a man open, bank it off the glass into the middle of the ice and work on it from there. Here’s your forecheck: first man on the puck, second man backing him up, third man backing him up.’ I go okay, what else? He says. ‘That’s it.’ I look at him, ‘What?’ He says, ‘That’s it. I won hundreds of games just like that. I brought Hingham to a few state championships with that. Just focus on the basics and you’ll have good teams.’ And you know what? That’s what I did and we starting winning by focusing on the basics. I couldn’t believe it. It seemed too easy. But it worked. So I have Garrett Reagan to thank for that.”
Mike continues: “Billy [Conboy] and I had a real love for the game of hockey. We went to school so we could play hockey. Really. Without it, we wouldn’t have graduated high school. That’s how important hockey was to us. We had then, and still have now, such a love for the sport that I felt that I had a responsibility to carry that on to my players when I got into coaching. I wanted my own kids, the kids I coached, to be instilled with that same love of the game. I wanted them to feel the exact same way that Billy and I did when we were their age. I wanted everyone who went through the program to say, ‘Oh my God, that was the funnest, most rewarding experience I’ve ever had.’ It’s not important whether they played a little or a lot. I just wanted these kids to remember what it felt like to play high school hockey and have teammates that they cared about and wanted to play for.
“That was really what I tried to bring to coaching. We had such a blast playing when we were that age that I wanted it to continue through them. And I think it did. The memories I have playing with Robbie Griffin, Chris Griffin, Billy, and all those guys my age, and even some younger guys like Michael Oar, the camaraderie that we developed over time has just been irreplaceable to me. I wanted my kids to learn through the game of hockey how important that was.”
In 2018, after a total of twenty-one years, Michael Breen retired from coaching high school hockey. His 2006-2007 team were the Division III State Champions, only the second time in the program’s history that a Scituate team won it all. It is unknown how many kids he’s influenced through his love of hockey and his desire to pass that love of the game on to them. What is known is that he has countless friendships dating back fifty years or more because he’s never forgotten the lessons he learned off the ice. Treat every teammate like your best friend because you can never have too many.
Michael and his wife Holly live in Norwell with their daughters Emma and Katie. Mike notes that his daughters developed a love for hockey at a very early age. They grew up going to Scituate High School hockey games all over the South Shore and loved wearing their Scituate sweatshirts and hats while they watched their father coach. Emma is a junior at Norwell High School. She anchors the blue line for the Norwell Clippers just like dad.
Edited April 5, 2019