Krause: Jets players and assistant coaches alike honor Melanson with impressive effort

First, you feel your season slipping away. You’ve just been blasted in a weekend game by Marblehead, 7-2, and you’ve painted yourselves into an inextricable corner. You have three games left ? and you have to win them all to qualify for the state tournament.Then, you go to school Monday and get called down to the athletic office for some real devastating news: your coach has had a heart attack and he’s fighting for his life.The first thing you think of, perhaps, is that this just isn’t possible. It can’t be. He was behind the bench Saturday, barking out orders ? probably expressing his extreme displeasure, as only he can, following the loss.You were approaching Monday’s practice with trepidation anyway, because you’d probably get verbally spanked and, perhaps, end up skating up and down the ice until your tongues were hanging out ? just like you had to do on Christmas Eve after that horrendous loss to Saugus.But you weren’t expecting this. How do you respond? What do you do? Where do you go?You are a member of the Lynn Jets, the combined Classical-English hockey team, and your coach, Al Melanson, lies in a hospital in Portland, Maine, in critical condition four days after his heart attack.The first thing you can do, thankfully, is listen to the assistant coaches (Mike Deering, Joe Conlon, Ron Gaudet, Jim Bransfield and Joe Gunning). They understand that the first thing they have to do is reach out to you and make sure you’re aware of what’s going on, but still focused enough to play hockey.”First,” said Deering, who, along with Conlon, is co-coaching the team in Melanson’s absence, “we’ve made sure they know what’s going on. We’ve given them every update, so that they’re aware.”But at the same time,” he said, “once you get out on the ice, it’s all business.”If you were casting a detective show, Deering would be a shoo-in for the “good cop” in the “good cop, bad cop” game. He said he and Conlon have tried to change a few things around at practices so that the players aren’t standing around thinking about their coach while they’re on the ice.”I thought it was important to keep them moving, keep things lively, make sure they don’t have time to let it get to them,” he said.Everybody understands what’s at stake. Everybody understands that while hockey is hockey, the perspective changes when a man’s life is hanging in the balance. But at the same time, the best tribute to that man is to go out and play the game of your lives the first opportunity you get.And that’s exactly what the Jets did last night. They played their hearts out. Or, as Deering put it, “they played with the same heart that Al Melanson displayed.”Alas, they did not win. They tied Saugus, 3-3, which eliminated them from the tournament. But that hardly mattered to Deering and Conlon.”This was our best game of the year,” Deering said. “I can’t think of a player on this team who didn’t go out there and give everything he had. I couldn’t be prouder of them.”In high school hockey, all anybody asks is for you to go out and give everything you have,” he said. “And if you don’t win, well, that happens a lot in life. The toughest part of this job, now, is going to be to make sure these kids don’t dwell on this. They’re devastated.”Melanson has deep ties to just about all his assistants. They all know him, and understand that while he’s definitely old-school in his ways (“ya THINK?” Deering replied when presented with the question), they also know quite well the other side of him.”He may seem tough,” said Gaudet, “but he also has your back. He’ll get after you, but he’s also the type of guy who’ll go up to you five minutes later and give you a pat on the back.”Said Conlon, “He’s been awfully good to me. He brought me into the program as an assistant, and even though I didn’t play for him, it almost feels like I did, because I played for Matt Poska, who played for Al. So it’s like a chain of succession.”When the Jets skated onto the ice for the third period, with the score tie