Harvard Assistant Reilly Has Maine Ties

It was one of the few moments over the past six months when Harvard men’s hockey assistant coach Gene Reilly wasn’t obsessing about Crimson hockey.

On the day after Harvard completed its remarkable turnaround and won the ECAC championship, Reilly just wanted to let it all sink in.

He wasn’t thinking about the 9-13-2 start to the season that left the Crimson buried deep in the division. He wasn’t pondering how the team had racked up a 9-1-1 mark since then, or how Harvard had gone undefeated in the ECAC tournament. He wasn’t even watching the NCAA Tournament Selection Show on ESPN2 to find out whom and where his team would play next. Instead, Reilly was totally content to spend a relaxing day with his family.

But then the phone rang.

On the other end of the line awaited the friendly voice of Maine assistant coach Grant Standbrook.

“He was watching [the selection show],” Reilly said of Standbrook. “As soon as he saw that we were playing each other he gave me a call. We talked for a while and asked for scouting reports on each other’s team.”

Today’s Harvard-Maine matchup in the first round of the NCAA Tournament will be a little different for Reilly—not just because of his good friendship with Standbrook or the heightened importance of a tournament game, but because for three years Reilly bled blue and white as an assistant coach for the Black Bears.

A four-year player for Elmira College, Reilly graduated in 1986 looking to stay in the game. For the next 12 years, he worked his way up through the coaching ranks until Maine gave him a shot at his first job at a big-time hockey program in 1998.

Under the guidance of former Black Bears head coach, the late Shawn Walsh, Reilly fit right in with Maine. There, he met Standbrook and the two have remained close ever since.

“Gene is a very close friend, and we had a lot of fun together, and we worked hard together,” Standbrook said. “I believe we pretty much have the same philosophy when it comes to coaching in that we regard highly the fundamentals and the development of players.”

As it turned out, Reilly and Standbrook helped develop the players at Maine into the best in the country. In 1999, the Black Bears accomplished what the Crimson will set out to do beginning this weekend: winning the National Championship.

The next year, the success continued, as Maine took home the Hockey East crown. And in the fall of 2000, Reilly got his first shot at being the number-one guy behind the bench at a major program when he was named interim head coach while Walsh was ill.

After the 2001 campaign, Reilly felt the pull of professional hockey and left the Black Bears to become an assistant coach with the Ottawa Senators AHL affiliate in Grand Rapids and Binghamton, where he has spent the past two seasons.

Despite the two-year separation between him and Maine, Reilly knows that he very easily could have remained with the Black Bears and could be behind the other bench when Maine and Harvard meet this weekend.

“I wanted to go into pro hockey,” Reilly recalled. “But who knows? Maybe I would have stayed there. But I got a chance to go into pro hockey and that’s what I wanted to do.”

For Harvard, Reilly’s decision worked out perfectly. When former assistant coach Nate Leaman resigned last July to take over the head coaching job at Union, Reilly fit right into the vacancy in head coach Mark Mazzoleni’s staff.

Reilly’s duties include working with the forwards and helping coordinate the penalty kill, both of which came up huge in the Crimson’s run to the ECAC championship.

“Gene Reilly is a heck of a hockey coach,” Mazzoleni said. “He’s been a great addition to our staff. It’s worked out very, very well.”

What has impressed Mazzoleni and the players the most about Reilly is his incessant attention to details.

“He’s an excellent teacher on the ice; he’s attentive to details, that’s all he talks about are details,” Mazzoleni said.

Co-captain Kenny Smith added: “He knows the little parts of the game very well, and he brings an intensity to the team that has helped us master the little things that have led to our success recently.”

Although Reilly and his propensity for perfection have found a new home at Harvard, staring across at him from the opposite bench on Friday will be a good friend and unforgettable times.

“It’s going to be a very awkward situation,” said Reilly, his voice lowering slightly. “I still have some very good friends and memories over there.”

Reilly can only hope that the memories he makes at Harvard will be similarly sweet.

—Staff writer David H. Stearns can be reached at stearns@fas.harvard.edu.