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Mike Latendresse
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Mike Latendresse knew what he was getting when he took over the Messalonskee High School hockey team. He was getting a team that had won just eight games in the previous two seasons and one that was moving up to Class A.

He also knew the Eagles were a talented team, they just needed the right attitude to win hockey games.

"Even at the B level, they had the talent, it just needed to be put together," Latendresse said.

The Eagles put it together enough to win 11 games in their first season in Eastern Maine Class A and earn their first playoff berth since 1998. For his team's accomplishments, Latendresse has been named the Morning Sentinel Hockey Coach of the Year. Winslow High School's Don Skillings and Waterville Senior High School's Norm Gagne were also considered.

Latendresse made a number of little changes to his team's routine to get them to feel more like a team, and made a major change in practice to change their attitude.

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"He changed how we carried ourselves, he made us act like a team and look like a team," Messalonskee senior captain Brayden Sheive said. "We all wore the same thing to games, and he wanted us to look good on the ice. He wanted us to be a team. He and (assistant) Coach (Jeff) Veilleux had a plan for us and we needed to buy into it."

"The intensity in practice was completely different," Messalonskee senior captain Seth Patten said. "If we weren't skating hard, he'd make us work harder. If you didn't work hard, it was going to be the worst practice of your life."

Those changes, along with a close loss to Waterville and a win over Winslow in the preseason tournament showed the Eagles that Latendresse was correct in telling them they were a good team. A win over Waterville in the second game of the regular season and over Winslow a few days later, solidified those thoughts.

"Those (preseason) games didn't mean much, but for morale, they put the players in the right frame of mind," Latendresse said. "(Beating Waterville and Winslow in the opening week) was the key to our season. For us to lose those two games would have been a big problem."

Messalonskee parlayed those two wins into a six-game winning streak and finished the regular season 11-7. The Eagles lost to Bangor in the quarterfinals of the Eastern A playoffs. It was the first playoff game for any player on the Messalonskee roster.

Latendresse may have worked his players hard, but was able to keep hockey fun for his players as well, which another key factor in the Eagles success. A native of Montreal, Latendresse speaks with a thick French accent, which his players to quick to get tease him about.

"Sometimes he'd say something and we wouldn't know what he was talking about and we'd say 'That only works in Canada, Coach,'" Patten said. "He had this rink that he'd draw plays on, and right at center ice it had an America flag. At the start of practice he'd take a red marker and change it to a Canadian flag and we'd all get after him."

The teasing was allowed, as long as the players worked hard for him. They did, and they saw the results.