On an 80-degree September day in Wellesley, Mass., parents, agents, junior scouts and yes, even some college coaches, lined the glass and stands more than 10 minutes before one of the most highly anticipated matchups of the 2023 fall hockey slate.
Mount St. Charles’ 14-U team was taking on the Boston Junior Eagles. Some of the nation’s best 14-U prospects were in the game, but one would be ranked No. 1 among all American 2009-born prospects by Puck Preps in the coming weeks.
Rocco Pelosi.
Pelosi was a force in that game and the next one, which also was against the Junior Eagles. By the end of the season, Pelosi proved his high ranking, scoring 87 goals and tallying 170 points in 64 games, taking control of Mount’s single-season points record.
Most importantly, he led his team to a 14-U national championship last spring.
“He’s the best leader we’ve ever had in our program,” Mount St. Charles director of player identification John O’Connor said. “He competes his bag off.”
That unique mix of everything you could want in a hockey player goes back to his upbringing in Sewell, N.J.
Influential figures
At 9 years old, Pelosi was in the basement shooting pucks. The family set up a net in what it thought was a safe area. That proved wrong when Pelosi fired a shot off the crossbar that deflected through a nearby window.
“I was so scared to tell my mom,” Pelosi said. “It took me like 30 minutes to build up the courage to walk up and tell her.”
That Pelosi was shooting pucks in his basement at 9 years old was a sign of what one of his future strengths became — his shot. It also was a sign of one of his biggest influences, his older brother, Chris. An ’05, Chris is four years older than Pelosi.
“He probably went to a good 90 percent of my youth games growing up,” Chris said.
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The two made everything into a competition. Whether it was knee hockey, the latest NHL video game or even racing up the stairs, the brothers always went head to head.
“I was on the losing end of a whole lot of it,” the younger Pelosi said.
Still, constantly battling against his older brother toughened Pelosi and deepened his desire for success.
“Every time I do something and I see that he did it, I want to do it better than him,” Pelosi said.
Chris wasn’t the only one Pelosi was competing with. Pelosi played with the Hollydell Hurricanes out of his nearby rink for most of the early years on a team comprised of ’07s, ’08s and ’09s. One of those ’09s was Pelosi’s current teammate, Braiden Scuderi.
Then came Guy Gaudreau, father of the late Johnny and Matthew Gaudreau.
Gaudreau’s children were long gone from youth hockey but he still loved coaching. Gaudreau took over the team and split it into ’07s and ’08s. He stuck Pelosi, an ’09, with the ’08s and coached Pelosi for five years. That meant every so often, Johnny hopped behind the bench with his father.
“You’re standing on the bench with one of the best young NHL guys,” Pelosi said. “It was just super cool and you always wanted to impress him. You’re just trying to do stuff on the ice that he would do.”
It’s no surprise that Pelosi modeled his game after Johnny Gaudreau.
“He was always super helpful,” Pelosi said. “And his brother, Matt, too. They were both great to all the little kids from the area. Every time they could jump on the ice, they would, because they were at that point one time in their career. They just wanted everybody to succeed like they did.”
Pelosi eventually moved to the Philadelphia Hockey Club. His 13-U team was stacked with various current Mount St. Charles players, including Scuderi and goalie Nathaniel Chizik.
But just six games into the season, Pelosi broke his leg on an awkward play going into the boards. It cost him three months.
“I see all these different pros getting injured and coming back and lighting it up,” Pelosi said. “I just kind of trusted in God that he had his path for me. Everybody was so supportive and it just kind of helped me out mentally.”
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At the same time, Chris was at Mount St. Charles with the 16-U team. The school had caught wind of Rocco when he was 12 and wanted him to come in as an underage player on the 14-U squad filled with ’08s.
O’Connor went to watch Pelosi at the 12-U level in the spring of 2022 at a tournament at Thayer Academy in Braintree, Mass.
“I heard a lot about him so I was expecting big things,” O’Connor said. “And he was unbelievable. In the game I saw him play he probably had eight points. It wasn’t great hockey but you could tell he was an absolute rock star.”
While Pelosi didn’t enter a year early, he eventually landed in Woonsocket, R.I., for his 14-U season in the fall of 2023. It was an immediate fit.
Making the most of Mount
Mount St. Charles’ hockey history is stunning. Coached by Bill Belisle, a U.S. Hockey Hall of Famer, Mount St. Charles won 26 consecutive Rhode Island state titles from 1978 to 2003. Mount eventually added six more.
Under Belisle’s watch, Mount produced numerous NHL players including No. 1 picks Brian Lawton (Cumberland, R.I.) and Bryan Berard (Woonsocket, R.I.), as well as goalie Brian Boucher (Woonsocket, R.I.).
While the academy is separate from the school’s team, the history is felt when entering Adelard Arena.
“I saw the rich history that they had here,” Pelosi said. “It’s just something you want to be a part of and make better.”
Pelosi has done that. There was the record-setting, 170-point season as a 14-U. There was the national championship to cap off the campaign. But the way in which Pelosi conducts himself on the ice, in the locker room and in the dorms is a testament to his leadership skills.
“He’s mature beyond his years,” O’Connor said.
That continued as he made the jump to the 15O team. “He’s an extension of our coaching staff,” Mount St. Charles 15O coach Scott Gainey said. “Everybody in that locker room knows who the alpha male is.”
Pelosi is far from the rah-rah type. He’s not one to stand up and give a rousing, Herb Brooks-like speech before, during or after a game. But just his presence is enough to get teammates in line.
“He has a demeanor about him, that’s hard to put into words,” Gainey said. “But if you’ve ever been involved in a team sport or been in a locker room, you know what I’m talking about. My thing to him was I feel like he and a couple of others are leaders of the pack. If the leader of the pack is running, the whole pack will run, too.”
A great example of this came at the start of this season at the USHL Fall Classic, one of the top showcases for high-end 15O talent around the United States. Mount St. Charles was playing Honeybaked, a top program out of Michigan.
“Our team was dominant,” Gainey said. “But it starts from the top. When he’s dominant, everyone else falls into place. It gets back to that leader-of-the-pack thing. We won 6-2 but it could’ve been 11-2. We were just rolling.
“His mentality and his compete level are 150 percent contagious. Guys just read off it. We do as coaches, too.”
It’s stunning for a 15-year-old to have those kinds of skills. Pelosi attributes some of that to his father, Christopher, who did 25 years as a police officer and was a captain.
“I think I get it from him,” Pelosi said.
But he also got that from playing with and against older kids for most of his youth hockey years.
“It’s just kind of easy being around them and seeing what they do to win and how much they care about the sport,” Pelosi said. “Bringing it down to my age group, it’s just been easier for me. Everybody’s mature at this age but being around those (older) kids and being around my brother’s ’05 team, which was number one in the country for eight years, made it very easy.
“If you’ve got a lot of kids that want the same things as you, you’re all going to have like minds and want to do the same thing.”
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A big test for players is how they handle the transition from 14-U to 15O hockey. While 14-U is very good, there are many smaller players on the ice. Some still haven’t hit puberty, which is why taller, bigger kids dominate that level.
By 15O, most players are growing and putting on muscle. It’s a much harder level and a good indication of how things are going to play out in the higher levels.
Pelosi, who is 5-foot-11 and 168 pounds, posted 54 goals and 117 points in his first 47 games. He’s producing close to a three-points-per-game rate.
In other words, he’s doing just fine. This has given him ample future opportunities.
What the future holds
Roughly one month into every season, Gainey hands out a questionnaire to his players asking them about their short-term goals, long-term goals and where they might want to play college hockey.
Most kids put down a school because they like the jersey or because that school is one of the big programs. Remember, these kids are 15. Pelosi isn’t like the rest.
“He’s very detailed,” Gainey said. “Even when you ask him questions, he’s thinking. He’s not just a 15-year-old kid telling you what you want to hear.”
On Jan. 1, Division 1 college programs could begin reaching out to Pelosi. They can’t make any offers until Aug. 1. That means that for the next eight months, schools will make their pitch to Pelosi on why he should choose their school.
“I want to keep my options now until we get the chance to visit some of the schools,” Pelosi said.
He will have no shortage of schools to choose from. The typical powers like Boston College, Boston University, Michigan and North Dakota are in on him. Providence College, a school that has better recruiting classes by the year, also is vying for his services. Pelosi’s older brother Chris currently is a freshman at Quinnipiac. Expect the Bobcats to make a push.
Chris has advised his younger brother on how to approach a process that one Division 1 assistant coach said would include an aggressive push among schools to land him.
“Ask questions,” Chris said. “Get to know the coaches or whoever reaches out as well as possible. Hopefully, he can visit all the schools he wants to. If not, if you have to make that one decision, make sure you ride with it and make sure it’s the one you actually want to go to.”
Pelosi’s goal for the rest of this season is to win another national championship for Mount St. Charles.
As for where Pelosi will play next season, his options are open for that, too. That wouldn’t have been the case last year. According to PuckPreps, Pelosi is still the No. 1 American-born '09 skater. He should be a lock for the U.S. National Team Development Program’s U-17 squad next season.
But new rules now allow players to play juniors in the Canadian Hockey League and still attend college.
Is Pelosi doing his homework on the CHL?
“Yeah,” Pelosi said. “Since I was a little kid, I’ve always wanted to make the national team. That’s always been a dream of mine. But anything can happen nowadays so (the CHL) might be the best route for me. You never know until the time comes. I’m not committing to either yet. Just keeping everything open.”
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Still, the national program was the second thing he mentioned after winning a national championship when the topic of long-term goals arose.
“You don’t want to look too far ahead,” Pelosi said. “After (trying to win a national championship with Mount St. Charles) the next step is the national team and then after that, I want to play college hockey. And then after college hockey, I want to sign a pro contract and play as long as I can.”
Even at just 15 years old, Pelosi is on the right track to complete all of those objectives.
