The Bishop Guertin boys hockey team celebrates its Divison I title win over Bedford a week ago at Manchester's SNHU Arena. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

Last weekend the Bishop Guertin athletic program captured three team state championships in a span of 32 hours — from 10 a.m. Saturday to 6 p.m. Sunday — an incredible feat. The next three cycles, The Telegraph will examine just how this was done, team by team, and all three stories are also in print this weekend. Part 2: The boys hockey title.

MANCHESTER – Most coaches will tell you this common rule:

You win with seniors.

Thus, Bishop Guertin High School coach Gary Bishop knew when he went over his roster for the 2022-23 season that something good was going to happen.

Why? There were as many as 14 seniors in the fold.

He was thinking deep tourney run, for sure.

“We were hoping to,” he said after last weekend’s 3-2 Division I championship win over Bedford in overtime at SNHU Arena. “This is it. We figured if everybody came to play. …”

But there was also a flip side.

“Also with 14 seniors, they also think they’re tougher than everybody – and you have to stop that. That’s the hardest part with an older group. As they say, it’s about thumping, not about hurting. And that’s what they did (in the finals). They did a real nice job of not taking stupid slashing calls.”

And playing well in a tournament. While Bishop had to make sure his players didn’t overstep their bounds, he enjoyed their experience.

“It was a fun year,” he said. “It was a great year. You’re not doing a lot of teaching. They know what you want to do. They know the power play. They know the forecheck. They know everything you’ve done, they’ve done it for four years. We have to remind them that ‘You’ve been here four years.’ It was fun, they’re a great bunch of kids.”

Led by a senior forward Mantone, who had a hat trick.

“He’s been our go-to guy, he shoots like a pro,” Bishop said. “We keep telling him, ‘We want you to be Cam Neely, not (David) Krejci’. Shoot the puck. He wants to dance, we want him to shoot. Because when he shoots, you see what happens.”

“We’re a close team, the tightest group I’ve ever been with,” Mantone said. “We do everything together. In school we walk around, all together. Sleepovers all the time. A very close group. Special group, too.”

And with that many seniors, they remembered the pain of losing in the semis twice and quarters once during their first three years.

“We came up short the past three years, right there,” Mantone said. “But this year, we knew we were going to get it.”

Mantone, hero Luke Vogel, and the speedy Tim Kiely formed a tough top line with different qualities from each player.

“We put that line together early in the year, then we took them apart, then we put them back together,” Bishop said. “They work really well together. Johnny can shoot the puck, Kiely can skate with them, he handles the puck well and makes some great decisions. Again, he’s a Division I lacrosse player. He’s an athlete.

“And Logan’s Logan. He works his tail off the whole game.”

And it paid off with a breakaway and a penalty shot midway through the first overtime.

“I’m thinking he’s got a good chance to score and they bring him down,” Bishop said. “It was great for him.”

Bedford coach Jonathan Garrity wasn’t thrilled, obviously, but respected the decision even if he didn’t necessarily agree with it. The Bulldogs split with BG during the regular season and they knocked off the three-time defending champion Concord, also in overtime, in the semis.

“Losing like that, I feel like we deserve a better fate,” he said. “Even if we lost, just not like that. It’s tough. The refs have a tough job, too, I’m not trying to bash them.”

Guertin had great goaltending from Brayden King, another senior.

“He’s been playing like that all year,” Bishop said. “He’s had one bad game all year. He’s under 2.0 goals a game, he had that one bad game against Concord (an 8-2 regular season loss), and that’s been it.”

But he admitted being a little jittery.

“I definitely had some nerves going into the game,” he said. “I got down on myself a few times, but at the end of the day, I never really doubted we were going to win. This is a group that’s a family to me. We all knew coming into this game that we had what we need to do to do it.”

Another championship, the program’s seventh. But this one had a different pre-game feel to it for Bishop, because on the ride to Manchester from Skate 3 in Tynsborough, he couldn’t hear a thing. “There was not a word on the bus ride here,” he said. “Which was kind of a shock. Nothing. Tyngsborough to here, complete silence.”

Sounds of silence? Sounds of seniors. Senior champions.