In his two seasons at Mount St. Charles Academy, goalie Nathaniel Chizik did just about everything to endear himself to his teammates and coaches.
He was steady and reliable in the crease and made spectacular 2-on-1 saves look easy. He led the Mounties to back-to-back national championships. And his dry, understated sense of humor could always get the locker room laughing.
“I can’t tell you one bad thing about him,” said teammate Rocco Pelosi.
Mount St. Charles coach Jimmy Creamer couldn’t go quite as far. One habit drove him crazy.
“If we’re on a bus,” Creamer laughed, “we’re just waiting for Nate.”
Chizik was notorious for running late after games for a simple reason: he never wanted to leave the ice.
“He’s literally the last guy on the rink,” said Creamer, the U15 coach at Mount. “He stays on after practice until he can’t get off. The Zamboni has almost cleared the ice, and he’s still on the ice.”
That’s become a force of habit for Chizik, who will squeeze an extra second of ice time at any and every opportunity. To the 6-foot-3 netminder, every additional moment spent practicing is a chance to separate himself from the pack, to improve his game a little bit more.
That drive to improve stood out to those at the U.S. National Team Development program, who selected Chizik to the NTDP’s U17 squad for the 2025-26 season, along with Pelosi and Mount St. Charles teammates Brayden Willis and Christian Semetsis.
Chizik has dreamed of playing for Team USA for as long as he can remember, and he set his sights on making the NTDP team around the time he turned 13. When he arrived at Mount St. Charles, he realized he’d have a legitimate chance to make it happen.
The goal of making the team was a driving motivator as he posted a dominant 1.48 goals against average for the 14U Mounties in 2023-24, leading the squad to a national title. He was just as good this season, posting a 29-4-0 record as Mount St. Charles captured the 15U national championship.
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Through it all, Creamer was impressed with how Chizik handled the pressure of the impending NTDP roster selection, which is often stressful for top-level players in the 15U age group.
“It was clearly one of his goals,” Creamer said. “We spoke about it, and just watching him slowly build to that, to get to the end.”
Chizik tried to stay focused on team success with Mount St. Charles, hoping the call from the NTDP would come hand in hand. That’s exactly what happened. He got an invite to the program’s 40-man camp, and a call from NTDP Director of Player Personnel Rod Braceful came soon after.
Braceful texted Chizik’s father, asking for a meeting in his office. When Chizik and his dad walked in, Braceful kept things quick and businesslike.
“He gave me a folder with the contract and said, ‘We’d like to give you an opportunity to play for us next year,’” Chizik remembered. “It was all smiles from there.”
Philadelphia-based goalie trainer Chris Economou still remembers the first time he encountered Chizik at his training facility, back when the netminder was eight years old. Chizik showed up for a tryout out of the blue, and began taking reps in the crease with the other goalies in his age group.
“Holy (expletive),” Economou thought to himself. “That kid’s pretty big for his age, and he’s pretty damn good.”
What stood out to Economou most, beyond the height and physical attributes, was Chizik’s willingness to work — even at such a young age. At eight years old, many goalies will try to make saves “on their own terms,” as Economou put it, making a full effort on every other shot or every third shot. That wasn’t the case with Chizik.
“Nate was trying on every single puck, and he’s stopping everything,” said Economou. “I said to one of the board members on the bench, ‘Go find that family. Do not let them leave the building.’”
Chizik made the team he was trying out for — the Hatfield IceDogs — and was the best goalie on the team as a first-year squirt. Before long, Economou was pushing him to play a higher level of youth hockey.
“You can’t stay here,” Economou told him. “You’re going to have to go play Triple-A hockey.”
Chizik left the IceDogs for the Philadelphia Jr. Flyers, before moving to the Philadelphia Hockey Club, where he first became teammates with Pelosi. The two of them came to Mount St. Charles from there.
Economou still works with Chizik in the summers and whenever the goalie is back home in Warrington, Pa., on the outskirts of Philadelphia.
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When the two train together, Economou’s greatest point of emphasis is skating. It’s something the trainer instills in all of his goalies from a young age, and it’s turned into one of Chizik’s greatest assets on the ice.
“He has spent a lot of time from nine years old on just skating and being in goalie mode all the time, just moving around and figuring out how his body works,” Economou said. “He was ahead of the curve in that way.”
That mobility lends itself to the impressive cross-crease saves Chizik has become so adept at. And even when Chizik isn’t able to get across as quickly as he’d like, his sizable frame helps fill space and “make some saves by accident,” as Economou put it.
But for as talented a pure goaltender as he may be, Chizik’s coaches and teammates agree it’s the off-ice attributes that are the true separator.
When Pelosi began playing with Chizik with Philadelphia Hockey Club, for instance, he noticed a pregame ritual that was unlike anything he’d seen. Long before warmups, Chizik would find a spot high up in the stands or on the bench and begin a visualization routine.
He’ll close his eyes and imagine himself making clutch saves, making the physical motion of a glove save or dropping into his butterfly. Then, he’ll envision himself making a key save in overtime and see his teammates going down the other end and winning the game.
“Just every great aspect to a game,” Chizik said. “And I’ll get dressed, maybe sit in my gear and do it again.”
Chizik is a self-described “visual guy,” and said he’s found the visualization tactics have helped him settle down in game situations.
“I gotta see it before I do it,” he said.
It’s something he’s been doing for years, even dating back to his early days working with Economou, when he was nine. Back then, he’d try to mimic parts of Braden Holtby’s pregame routine and ask older goalies for tips about the rituals that worked for them. The visualization itself was inspired by former Flyers goalie Carter Hart’s pregame ritual, which Chizik learned about through his dad.
All of it has made Chizik an unflappable force in the crease.
“He’s calm, he’s cool, he’s collected,” said Creamer. “He gets frustrated, like everybody else, but he has the ability to come back from that stuff and get better from it.”
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And then there’s Chizik’s obsession with ice time, which stands out to just about anyone who has worked with the goalie.
“I would always think to myself, say I stay on for 10 minutes after practice five days a week,” Chizik said. “That’s 50 extra minutes a week of training…it’s just getting that extra work nobody thinks about.”
He’s excited to take that same routine, the visualization, the post-practice skates, all of it, to the NTDP.
That’s great news for USA Hockey — even if it means the program’s Zamboni and bus drivers are in for an extra wait.
