Paul Flanagan has made six conference championship games in the last nine years and lost all of them. Three College Hockey America second-place trophies sit atop a shelf in the SU head coach’s office. Another lies somewhere in Tennity Ice Pavilion, broken. One year, there wasn’t even a runner-up prize, only a consolation handshake. The most recent token of falling short isn’t even in Syracuse.

It’s still at HarborCenter in Buffalo, where SU lost to Robert Morris in the CHA title game in March. After the buzzer sounded, captains Larissa Martyniuk and Jessica Sibley abandoned the trophy on top of the garbage bin opposite the SU locker room door.

When the team boarded the bus for another disappointing ride back to Syracuse, no one bothered to pick it up. Not even the head coach.

Only one person in the program, Flanagan, has been behind the bench for all the CHA title losses. Hired at the start of the program in 2008, Flanagan has since guided SU to the precipice of a championship with a persistence only to be kicked back down every time. Now, starting his 10th year at Syracuse, Flanagan’s vision lies beyond a conference title, to a level of winning he knows very well.

“Yeah we want to win the CHA championship on the way,” Flanagan said, “but we want to play for a national championship.”

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Prior to Syracuse, Flanagan coached at St. Lawrence, his alma mater, from 1999 to 2008 and won 230 games. Flanagan started as a men’s assistant, figuring he’d return to teaching high school after he got his master’s degree.

But in 1999, St. Lawrence offered Flanagan the women’s head coaching position, and the ability to stay home more with his wife and kids was all he needed to hear. During his time in charge, the Saints made the NCAA tournament six times in a seven-year span. Five of the six trips resulted in Frozen Fours.

Amid his run of success with the Saints, Flanagan felt a pull to change. Professionally, he said, coming to Syracuse was a chance to try something new and build something on his own. Personally, the move afforded his wife and children new opportunities in a bigger city.

“You know,” Flanagan said, “I felt at my age, at that point in time 10 years ago, if I’m ever going to do anything, this is the time to do it.”

When SU hired Flanagan, Tennity Ice Pavilion, SU’s home rink, wasn’t much more than a sheet of ice for students to skate on for fun, let alone the facility of a perennial contender. There wasn’t a dedicated locker room or office.

“I don’t even think there was a hockey puck on campus,” Flanagan said.

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Besides facilities, Flanagan faced a more immediate challenge of building a 20-woman roster from nothing. His rosters at St. Lawrence were loaded with talent.

“I had five All-Americans in that little span of time (at St. Lawrence),” Flanagan said. “Two, three-time All-Americans. We had some studs.”

Generally, when an NCAA athlete transfers schools, they must sit out a year before being eligible. But to Flanagan and Syracuse’s good fortune, Flanagan said, when a program is created, it is exempt from that rule for the first handful of years.

Flanagan’s first team at Syracuse had 10 freshmen, eight transfers, a walk-on goalie and former SU softball player Rachel Tilford playing defense.

For Syracuse, the first few years of existence were built on that bevy of transfers. In its first season, the Orange finished 9-16-3.

“Second year,” Flanagan said, “we’re in the championship game because of the transfers.”

Despite smashing second-year expectations, the championship result, a 3-1 loss to then-No. 1 Mercyhurst, would become all too familiar for Flanagan and SU. The next year, Syracuse lost to Mercyhurst again, 5-4, at home. That loss to the Lakers, Flanagan said, was one of the toughest he’s experienced in over 25 years of coaching. At the time, he had no idea that four more disheartening losses lurked.

“Never the bride, always the bridesmaid, I guess,” Flanagan said after SU’s most recent title loss to then-No. 9 Robert Morris.

At a certain point, the players and coaches absorbing the losses struggled to find an explanation.

“I hate saying that luck may play a part in it,” said Melissa Piacentini, former SU forward and current all-time points leader, “but if you’re losing over and over by a goal or so…”

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But Flanagan himself tries to not dwell on the results, and focusing more on enjoying the “process,” he said. Building a culture where his players have an “edge,” Flanagan said, by teaching them lessons, remains one of the most important parts of his job. As long as he can beat the goalies himself, he quipped, he’ll keep coming back.

“I’ve been so lucky to get into this,” Flanagan said. “… (I) thought I would get my master’s, go back to high school teaching and coaching, and that was 30 years ago.”

The past two years, the Orange has been picked to win the CHA. But just like every year for SU, players and coach agree, this could be the year when the Orange finally breaks through.

Munroe referred to this year’s team as “special.” But for this year to be truly special, Flanagan said, Syracuse will need it’s “best players playing their best.”

SU isn’t a team that Flanagan’s built around one or two stars like he had at St. Lawrence, he said. It will take a group effort for this year’s team to get where his St. Lawrence teams went regularly.

In Flanagan’s mind, three or four players have to have what he called, “exceptional” years, specifically forwards Stephanie Grossi and Alysha Burriss, defenders Megan Quinn and Munroe and goaltender Abbey Miller.

A couple of forwards, he said, need to score 20 or more goals this year and the blueliners must log quality minutes while pitching in a dozen or so goals and 30 assists. Then, Flanagan said, Syracuse will be a top team in the conference.

“It’s really tough to sort of predict that,” Flanagan said, “because I do know that some of these kids are capable. I don’t know, I’m not gonna bet the farm that so and so is going to do this or that.”

For as much as he tries to hide it, Piacentini knows Flanagan badly wants to win the CHA.

“You can tell it really bothers him,” Piacentini said. “He’s a competitor and he wants to win and it’s tough when you’re losing over and over in the finals.”

If this is the season Syracuse finally gets to celebrate on a Saturday in early March, one man will ensure the trophy makes the trip back to Tennity.

Published on September 27, 2017 at 10:30 pm

Contact Andrew: [email protected] | @A_E_Graham