Every year, for the past two and a half decades, those same nightmarish memories stuck with Greg Toskos.

He still has visions of Mennen Arena, the site of the 1994 state championship game, where the current Don Bosco coach led the Ironmen as a player and fell just shy of a state title in the program's first ever final appearance. 

25 years later, after he led Don Bosco as its long-tenured coach to its first ever state championship with a 3-1 victory over Delbarton this season in the NJSIAA/NJ Devils Non-Public Championship, Toskos finally cleared his conscience while lifting the program to never-before-seen heights.

"I've made the joke, half joking, that I finally got rid of one of the nightmares I've had in life," Toskos said. "And that's not finishing that game from 25 years ago.

"Now it feels like it's finished."

The journey for Toskos, the epitome of a Don Bosco lifer and the 2018-19 ice hockey Coach of the Year, started well before he took the helm of the Ironmen in 2006. As a player, he earned the Star Ledger Player of the Year award and his 229 career points still stand as the program record.

When Toskos, who is now the only person in the history of our awards to earn both the ice hockey Player and Coach of the Year honors, finally became the head coach of the Ironmen he wanted to build it his way — a program based on culture and former players looking to break through for Don Bosco's first ever state title.

"I was fortunate to play NCAA hockey (at Division III Babson College) and I wanted to run the program as close to a college program as possible. That meant culture in the locker room, it meant pride in the school and it meant building a staff of alumni who have played and gone to the school. And if we were able to do all that correctly, I knew we'd be successful. And that could have meant wins or championships and luckily it's meant both now."

Toskos' vision of having former Ironmen on his coaching staff formed quickly and became the key to finally breaking through the long state title drought. His teammate on that '94 team, Sean Foye, is the associate head coach and came on when Toskos was initially hired. Andrew Steffey, a 1999 Bosco graduate, was apart of that initial coaching staff as well with the lone varsity outlier, goalie coach Chris Matteo, coming less than 20 miles down the road at Lakeland.

The line of alumni continues throughout the entirety of the Don Bosco coaching staff as 2008 graduates Rob Morieria and Chris DeCandia and 2009 grad Brandon Vigorito handle the junior varsity responsibilities. 

That reliance on the past and the history of the program is why Toskos believes that the last 53 iterations of Don Bosco hockey truly played a hand in the 54th edition finally bring home state hardware back to Ramsey.

"As a coach, it's a different award and I look at it as a staff award," Toskos said. "I look at how hard the guys on my staff and what they did this year to go above and beyond to get us to where we are. It was noticeable to me as the guy running the program but I look at that award as a group award.

"A week later and I still don't know if I'm happier as a coach or as a former player. I mean that in the sense of, since I took the job as the coach, one of the things that has always been important to me is the history of this program. In talking to guys that have played in this program and trying to connect with them to get more information as to what it was like and pictures and stats and we've been able to do that.

"We've been able to get information from the '70s and the '80s and my group in the '90s. To me, everybody who has been a part of this program and has contributed to this program, especially the last 10 or so years, made a difference that played a part in us winning. I truly believe that."