Gary Bishop, center, is retiring after 35 seasons as the Bishop Guertin head boys hockey coach, and assistant Mark Mantone, right, is also stepping away. Both go out on top as BG wom the Division I title in March. (Courtesy photo)

NASHUA – After the Bishop Guertin High School boys hockey team beat Hanover in the Division I semifinals this past March, two longtime hockey coaches and rivals, the Bears’ Dick Dodds and the Cards’ Gary Bihsop were chatting.

“So,” Dodds asked Bishop, “am I going to be able to coach against you next year?”

“Maybe,” came the answer from Bishop.

That was a pretty good indicator, as Dodds and the rest of the New Hampshire high school hockey world won’t be the same with announcement Thursday afternoon that Bishop was ending a brilliant 35-year career at BG, retiring after 514 wins at the school and seven Division I titles in 13 trips to the finals. He goes out on top, as the Cards beat archrival Concord 1-0 in overtime after losing 2-1 the previous year in the finals early in the fourth overtime.

Bishop, 77, almost called it quits last year but perhaps that tough loss gave him motivation to come back for one more skate.

“It was time,” he told The Telegraph on Thursday. “I was leaning toward that, Mark (longtime assistant Mantone) and I talked a number of times and it was getting to the point where it was time. There’s no question I’m going to miss it.”

Bishop was hired back in 1991 by the late Dick Piwowarski, another BG institution. He had left his position as a UMass Lowell assistant and hadn’t planned on coaching right away until his wife told him otherwise.

“She said ‘Find another coaching job,'” Bishop said with a chuckle, and he did after then Chelmsford coach Jack Fletcher, who had worked at BG for a couple of years, recommended him to Piwowarski.

“Dick called Jack and Jack said ‘Hire him, and give him whatever he wants,'” Bishop said. “So I have to thank Jack for that.”

And the rest is history. Bishop got his 500th win ironically against his alma mater, Billerica, where he has been working part-time in the IT department.

Also stepping way is Bishop’s longtime associate head coach Mantone, who was with Bishop for 27 of the 35 years.

“You weren’t just the person next to me on the bench, you wee the steady anchor, the trusted confidant, and the brother in-arms who made every season possible,” Bishop said in a statement.

What’s next? Bishop’s replacement may or may not be internal, but Brown preferred to dwell more on the celebration of Bishop, “and give Gary his day.”

“We have a pretty good idea of where we’re going to go, we just have to finalize it, hopefully by next week,” Brown said, “and off we go.”

But as much as Thursday was a celebration of a legendary career, Brown said it was certainly a big change. He and Bishop talked on Wednesday and Bishop told him he was set to retire.

“I don’t know how many people are still around BG who remember a day when Gary Bishop wasn’t the hockey coach,” he said. “We’re going back to 1991-92; to put that in perspective, I think I was a freshman in high school. I think I might have been in eighth grade.

“Yeah, we’re going into a bit of unchartered territory, but he’s left the program and in a good spot, a good place. The direction we’re going to move will be gritty and continue on what he’s tried to build.

“It’s definitely a tough day for us. Gary’s coached parents and kids.”

He succeeded former BG hockey coach Mike McCaffrey, who at last look was an assistant athletic director at New England College. Bishop was inducted into the New Hampshire Legends of Hockey Hall of Fame in 2016.

Among the BG teams that stand out in Bishop’s mind were the 2001-02 title team, as “there were a lot of kids there that went on to play college hockey,” he said. “And later on the whole landscape of high school hockey changed and you weren’t getting a lot of kids who were going to play college hockey.

“But you had some great players.”

A couple of Cardinals have gone on to play in the pros, most recently Justin Pearson, who was with the AHL’s Cleveland Monsters, an affiliate of the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Another aspect of Bishop’s career was the friendships he developed with longtime coaches like Dodds and especially Concord coach Duncan Walsh, who has been on the job 36 years.

Walsh said he thought two years ago Bishop was talking about retiring but came back for one more year. For him it won’t be the same.

“My second year was his first year,” Walsh said. “He was great to me, we became friends, and we had some battles.

“I may be biased but I think it’s the best rivalry in the state. It will still be Concord-BG, but it won’t be the same because Bish won’t be there.”

Not having to deal with the off-season land training and summer hockey, Bishop said he’ll spend a lot of time at his summer trailer in Gilford. But this is the first time Bishop won’t be behind a bench in some 51 years, as he coached in a few places before coming to BG. So how will he handle it when the first day of tryouts comes?

“I’ll probably go sit in the stands and watch,” Bishop said.