Weeks after losing 3 family members, this teen channeled his grief to help his hockey team seize the state championship title
By Graham Hurley, CNN
(CNN) — Between slick ice and sharp skates, the chilled hollow of a hockey rink is where Colin Dorgan has experienced the most devastating and the most jubilant moments of his life – all within the span of a month.
The high school senior’s mother, brother and grandfather were killed in mid-February when gunfire pierced the clamor of sticks, skates and cheers during one of his games at an arena in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.
His life upended, Dorgan took some time to return to the rink. And when his skates hit the ice, the team captain performed like he hadn’t missed a moment.
Last week’s divisional championship game played out like a movie: In double overtime, Dorgan scored the winning goal to send his team to state championship.
Three seats in the arena that should have been filled by Dorgan’s biggest supporters were empty. Even so, as he would tell reporters after the state title nail-biter: “I truly felt it in my heart and my soul that they’re still with me.”
A difficult decision on the season
The head coach of the Blackstone Valley Co-op hockey team is also a retired firefighter who has seen his share of tragedy up close. But nothing could have prepared Chris Librizzi for what he witnessed February 16 at the Dennis M. Lynch Arena.
“This was by far the worst that I’ve ever been to, because I was right there from the onset,” Librizzi said.
While his players scrambled off the ice, the former first responder rushed to the stands to treat the wounded in another episode of gunfire shattering a space thought to be safe.
After the shooting, returning to the rink was not an easy transition for anyone.
The coaches gathered the team for a meeting a couple of days after the shooting to encourage the players to take some time to think about whether they wanted to continue the season, emphasizing there was no pressure if they wanted to stop.
“I got to thinking after that that this is not a way that Rhonda Dorgan, Aidan Dorgan and Gerald Dorgan would ever want Colin’s season to end and not a way that they would want our season to end,” Librizzi explained about the decision to resume.
After circling back with the team and their families a few days later, Librizzi and the other coaches told the team they were going to keep playing.
“We want you to be a part of this team. Standing on the bench or standing in the stands with us, we’re going to continue the season,” Librizzi said.
‘Your mom would have kicked my ass’
At the same time, Librizzi had been meeting with Colin and his sister, Ava, each day following the shooting. Librizzi asked Colin about coming back to play for the rest of the season.
“I said, ‘Colin, if you don’t want to come back to the team, I completely understand and I will support your decision, but I just want you to know that if you decide not to come back to this team, and I allow that to happen, your mom would have kicked my ass,’” Librizzi said.
While Dorgan grieved, the team spent time together nearly every single day. The only exceptions were a couple of days when they were snowed in by the massive blizzard that gripped the region.
“The first two days back on the ice were incredibly difficult. Some of the players were hesitant on coming back and stepping foot on the ice,” Librizzi said.
They had regular workouts. They went to Topgolf. They had dinners together for 15 days straight. And perhaps most importantly, everyone participated in individual and group counseling sessions to cope with the tragedy.
Librizzi had previously told the schools’ administration this year would mark the end of his 32-year coaching career. The coach has cancer and has undergone four surgeries over the past year.
“After this incident took place, I had a conversation with my wife, and she said, ‘This is your call. It’s up to you,’” he said. “I told her I didn’t feel it was right for me to leave them this year, so I’m coming back next year.”
Dorgan, too, decided to come back.
The teen took time to begin to process the loss and returned to the team about two weeks after the shooting.
“He needed time to heal and time to make sure it was right for him to come back to the rink, but when I saw him back at the rink, I saw a look of joy on his face, and he was in a comfortable location,” Librizzi said.
‘The greatest moment of my life’
With less than two weeks to prepare, Dorgan rejoined his team as they laced up their skates for the divisional championship game. The players donned jerseys, now emblazoned with hearts stitched on the front bearing the initials of all three who died.
“I believe that bonding, that team unity, that ‘hockey family mentality’ came to fruition,” said Librizzi. “They were ready.”
As a defenseman, scoring was not normally in Dorgan’s repertoire. Yet in the playoffs, he proved that notion wrong night after night.
In the team’s quarterfinal match, Dorgan netted two goals with confidence, and he carried that spirit into the semifinal game.
Trailing 1-2, Blackstone Valley scored the equalizer in the third period. The score remained 2-2 at the final buzzer. It stayed that way through the first overtime period.
As the clock ticked the second overtime away, Dorgan scored on a breakaway, splitting two defenders as he came face to face with the opposing team’s goalkeeper before slamming the puck into the net.
Lifting his team to a 3-2 victory, Dorgan punched his team’s ticket to the state championship.
The stadium erupted into cheers, and Dorgan’s teammates swarmed to him after scoring the game-winning goal.
“It was the greatest moment of my life,” Dorgan told WPRI-TV after the game.
‘We got one more, boys’
Dorgan yanked his helmet off and amped up the crowd after celebrating the goal with his teammates.
“I was just overwhelmed with joy for him, overwhelmed with joy for the team, for Colin’s sister, for the whole family, and for our hockey family,” Librizzi said.
When the team was gathering in their defensive zone on the rink after the game winner, Librizzi darted across the ice to hug Dorgan.
“I just saw the raw emotion just pour out of his face,” recalled Librizzi. “It was just amazing. He needed that. He really needed that,” Librizzi added.
The weeks of preparation for these players leading to this moment were marked by pain, anxiety and also a ton of time in each other’s company, according to Librizzi.
“That team bonding, being together like that made all the difference in the world,” Librizzi said. “To then bring the team back together as one with team bonding and to see the joy and the jubilation on their faces from the last three games we played has just been tremendous.”
And advancing to the state championships extended Dorgan and the other seniors’ high school careers for one more climactic game.
“We’re not done,” Dorgan told his teammates in the locker room after the semifinal. “We got one more. We got one more, boys. We got one more.”
The team, Librizzi said, “just erupted.”
‘They’re still with me’
It all came down to Wednesday night.
Blackstone Valley slugged through two tough periods of hockey but ended up down, 0-2. Then, they dug in for an uphill battle.
With a little over five minutes left in the third period, Blackstone Valley scored.
Then, with the clock down to 30 seconds in regulation, Dorgan tied it up.
The season – with its stunning violence and grief, hard decisions and determination – would be decided in overtime.
After the first OT, the score remained 2-2.
And the second.
And the third.
Then, in quadruple overtime, Blackstone Valley Co-op scored.
It wasn’t Dorgan this time who landed the game-winner. But he was right there in the on-ice, post-game scrum with the teammates who’d carried him – and each other – through the unthinkable.
Later, Dorgan sat next to Librizzi as the coach struggled not to “cry again” and described how he managed to push through.
“My mom was an amazing, incredible person,” Dorgan told reporters. “Every day, just, I wouldn’t want to go to hockey practice, and she’d say, ‘You got to get up. You got to go to hockey.’ Every single day.”
It’s “that the Dorgan mindset,” he explained: “Just grind it out every single day, go to practice, go to work, and great things happen.”
“I could just – throughout all of the playoffs, even in this game, in the overtimes – I think, I truly felt it in my heart and my soul that they’re still with me,” he said of his mother, brother and grandfather.
“I think that I love them so much,” Dorgan continued, “and they’re still here.”
“And I know it.”
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