New Nashua North-Souhegan hockey coach Chris Zarlenga works with his players during a drill at Conway Arena. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

NASHUA – He’s hoping to make a difference.

Chris Zarlenga, the new boys hockey coach for the Nashua High School North-Souhegan co-op team, knows he’s the latest in a long line of coaches for the program since it became a merge of two teams, the seventh in the last nine years.

That, he says, is going to end – because he’s a great fit.

“My wife and I live in Amherst,” he said. “We don’t plan on moving. High school hockey was probably the most influential time in my life as a player (at Cranston West High in Rhode Island). Given that, I’ve always wanted to give back. I’ve always wanted to coach high school hockey, and one being a town that borders it which is Nashua, I don’t see myself going anywhere. I envision myself doing this for a very long time. Whether we’re successful or not, we’ll decide that, besides the record.”

There’s another ingredient: Zarlenga, 30, who is also an engineer for a defense contractor, has previously been on the North-Souhegan bench. Two seasons ago, he was an assistant to then head coach Bill Kotsifas, who guided the program for two seasons before not returning. That familiarity certainly should help.

“Absolutely,” Zarlenga, who was a winger in Rhode Island, said.

Interestingly enough, Zarlenga played club hockey in college in Florida, but he enjoyed the high school experience even more.

“Believe it or not, I think all roads for me lead back to high school hockey,” he said. “You’re playing for your town, you’re playing with kids you probably grew up with, with hockey and things of that nature. You’re playing for your school, your friends and your family are there. For most kids, unfortunately, this is where the buck stops, right. This is that journey for really, really competitive hockey. Getting them to understand that and taking it all in, I hope any senior here at the end of this season doesn’t want to leave the locker room.

“That’s the kind of atmosphere we want to build for these kids, this is what they’ll look forward to.”

Zarlenga’s wife is a teacher, so he has a bit of an insight into today’s student mind. He grew up in a hockey family, his father and uncle both played. The question is, when did he realize he wanted to get into coaching?

It was when he did some volunteer coaching while in college at the middle school, high school level. But in reality, it was always in him.

“Again, after having my high school coaches have such an influence on me and looking back on those years, I’ve always wanted to coach high school,” he said.

Zarlenga got a good taste of it working under Kotsifas.

“I learned a lot,” he said. “A lot about hockey in general. As I told the kids, ‘You’re last two coaches (including last year’s mentor, former minor leaguer Ashton Rome) have forgotten more about hockey than I probably know,” he said. “I’m not naïve to that. Both of them were extremely intelligent for the game.”

But Kotsifas taught Zarlenga that hockey wasn’t the end all be all.

“The biggest thing with Bill was that you’re not there just for hockey,” he said. “You’re there for them on and off the ice. In all aspsects. I think Bill did a great job of that. Awesome guy, super supportive, being there for them in all aspects.”

He got the assistant’s job just checking out who was the coach, finding Kotsifas’ name and emailing him. Same way he found out about the job being open this year over the summer, as Rome stepped down after just one year to spend more time coaching his son’s youth/junior team. Zarlenga met with both Nashua AD Lisa Gingras and Souhegan AD Kelli Braley,and made sure to work on having a good relationship with both.

“Be very communicative up front, is what I’ve learned,” he said. “We’ve had a very good relationship so far, and I want to keep it that way, we want the support.”

Thus Zarlenga knows what’s required. Communication won’t be an issue, especially with his players. Watch him at practice, he spent lots of time talking with individual players and encouraging them, as conditioning is a huge focus for a roster that at least at the start has only 18 players.

“For me, just being honest with them, having that mutual respect toward each other,” he said. “I’m going to be putting in as much time as you guys want me to. I can’t want it more than you. That’s been our message this whole preseason to them.

“It’s a great, great group of kids. They love to communicate, I hear from them all the time. We’ve been very lucky so far.”

In his year (2021-22 season) on the North-Souhegan bench, Zarlenga experienced two dramatic games against Nashua South-Pelham. That convinced him that the two games they play against their rivals can be their season.

“We don’t want to scrimmage in between,” he said. “We want the time to play to be those games, right? We want to keep it something special, keep it to those two dates.”

Zarlenga even wants to make them bigger, be it a Salute to Service night, some type of event. That, he said, is the plan for the future.

In high school, Zarlenga was, in his words, “a grinder.” He was a power forward, and his favorite part of the game was penalty killing. So you can pretty much guess what an emphasis will be with the Saber-Titans.

Zarlenga is also a big fan of the club hockey level that colleges have; Conway serves as the home of a large New England club level toureny dating back to the days when the now closed Daniel Webster College had a strong club team before going varsity.

“Being in Florida, the majority of the kids (playing hockey) in the Florida schools are all from New England, right?” he said. “They want to leave New England after 18 years of winter. We were playing against Tampa, Miami, really, really good hockey. It was fun because it was just two or three days a week of practice, and a game every other week. So you didn’t have that same time commitment, especially with college courses.

“It was fun. It wasn’t high school. Very different.”

Zarlenga knew some of the current upperclassmen when they were either freshmen or sophomores, plus some of the parents who were on the interview board were familiar with him.

“I’m sure that helped,” he said. “I was just being honest with them.I live here. I’m not going anywhere after a year. My plan is to stay.”

Running his first practice as a head coach was a fun experience.

“I didn’t think I was going to be nervous until I drove here,” he said. “This is interesting, right? In my office, at the end of the work day, trying to make sure I had everything planned out.”

He has help, assistant coach Kieran Altieri out of Londonderry, who also just emailed the administration saying he wanted to help out. The two have meshed well.

“He’s a heckuva hockey coach,” Zarlenga said. “We had been texting every day, making plans.”

Making plans for Zarlenga was the fun part, because he was doing it for his first program ever.

“Definitely,” he said. “A little nerve-wracking, right? A lot of these kids, if they played fall hockey, it’s not the most serious hockey, they’re not used to a lot of rules and structure, no shooting pucks between drills and things like that. When you have only 50 minutes of ice, you have to be efficient.

“When I blow the whistle, get in here, get on with me, we have to make the best use of our time.”

Zarlenga and Altieri want the Saber-Titans to be one of the best back checking teams in Division I.

“One of the things you’re going to hear me say over and over again is ‘Take a hit, give a hit,'” he said. “It doesn’t mean to go out there and annihilate somebody. Your first shift, just go out there and bump somebody. It puts you in the game, puts you in the mindset of ‘I’m in the game now, they know I’m here, and I’m going to stay in it.'”

When he first dabbled in coaching while in Florida, Zarlenga realized what he really liked about it.

“Just seeing kids grow, on or off the ice,” he said. “When you have kids come up to you with things not just about hockey. That’s when you know they have trust in you, you have a rapport with them and can have an effect on them for the rest of their life.”

New Nashua North-Souhegan hockey coach Chris Zarlenga gives instructions during the Saber-Titans’ opening night win over Bishop Brady at Conway Arena. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

There are, of course, lots of things he didn’t know about coaching. He’s still learning those.

“It’s what to do when you have a vast majority of different types of players,” he said. “Skill levels, how do you manage that, how do you keep everyone engaged? And how do you explain to them, after you’ve been skating for 50 minutes of practice, that you have to (condition). It’s not a punishment. It’s for a reason, why you’re doing everything.”

Conditioning, he feels, is a huge, huge key.

“I keep telling them, if you are one of the more conditioned teams, you will be very successful in this league,” Zarlenga said, “because you will win every third period.”

Once he was hired, Zarlenga gathered the upper classmen together once the school year began, swapping off between going to North and Souhegan.

“I wanted to know, ‘What’s your expectation of me, and what do you want out of this year,'” he said. “And everyone said ‘To be competitive and have a good team.'”

So Zarlenga was ready with his response.

“I said, ‘We’re going to do it one way,'” h e said. “Hard. Everything’s going to be “hard. And it’s going to be for a reason.”

Having the upper classmen on board, he said, was huge, “because they’re the leaders of the team.”

Which is why he met with everyone the day before the first practice.

“To get a group of 18 kids, who haven’t really played together a lot, get them there on time, have a good discussion, and set the expectations,” Zarlenga said. “And to execute is a huge plus for us, and to get this program in the right direction. … I think if we put things in place and make this an atmosphere and a program where kids want to stay, hopefully it bring people back into high school.”

One by one, as players were leaving Conway Arena after a recent practice, they made sure to stop and say good-bye to Zarlenga as he was sitting in the lobby having a conversation. The lines of communication are clearly open between players and their coach who wants to build a lasting program.

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