The ice was gone at the Clark Athletic Center but the games continued. Dakota Keene was in the rink playing roller hockey the summer after his freshman year at UMass Boston when coach Pete Belisle spotted him and pulled him aside.
Keene wondered what was up but took the meeting. His coach had a question about one of his former teammates in junior hockey, Nick Albano, whom Belisle said was giving hard consideration to coming to UMB in the fall.
With that, he had Keene’s full attention.
“I didn’t know what he wanted to talk to me about,” said Keene (Portland, Maine), before a recent practice. “He asked me what I thought of Nick and I said, ‘Is there really a chance we could get him here? He could be a top defenseman here for four years.’ ”
The 6-foot, 180-pound Albano, a sweet-skating, puck-moving junior who is coming off a second straight All-American season, will be a top defenseman for a third year this winter. He has put the sting of his light Division 1 recruitment behind him as he prepares to lead the Beacons into a new season.
As a freshman, he was one of the top playmaking blueliners in Division 3, finishing with 27 assists. Last year, his 16 assists (to go with six goals) were second on the team as the Beacons won the regular-season title in the New England Hockey Conference and returned to the NCAA tournament.
He’s caught enough eyes, including some that invited him to Bruins development camp two summers ago, to convince himself — and those around him — that the pro game awaits in his future, even if his route has been a little unorthodox.
“I can see it, definitely,” said Belisle. “He has the tools. Physically, I’ve seen him mature in two years.
“His skating? It’s above everything, and his puck-handling. He has the puck for the majority of the time he’s on the ice. He’s great at protecting the puck and he’s great at moving the puck. He’s very evasive; he’s a great spin-out man and his head is always up.”
The path from Division 3 to the pros isn’t a well-worn one, but it’s not an impassable one, either. In this conference, the top trailblazer was Keith Aucoin (Chelmsford, Mass.), who played parts of nine seasons in the NHL after starring at Norwich.
Colin Larkin and Rob Florentino (West Roxbury, Mass.) are the recent UMB guys who’ve carved out careers in the ECHL, as has former Babson goalie Jamie Murray (Scituate, Mass.). Former Norwich forward Will Pelletier just began his third season in the AHL.
“There’s not a ton of them,” said Belisle (Manville, R.I.). “You do need a little bit of that cachet story to get that spark, get that chance, get that invite. We’re always talking about building your résumé. I think Nick’s building a pretty darn good résumé.”
There was nothing too unusual about Albano’s path to college hockey. Three years starring at Beverly (Mass.) High School, then up to Proctor Academy for his senior season. Stints followed in the USPHL Premier with the Portland Junior Pirates and Islanders Hockey Club, then a trip west to play with Des Moines in the USHL.
“Honestly, the whole time I really thought I was going to play D-1 hockey,” he said. “I was like, ‘Everyone in the USHL plays D-1.’ It was going to be great, going to be a movie, what everyone dreams of. And then it kind of came to a reality.
“All my best friends out there were going to places like Minnesota-Duluth, Harvard. I thought I was just as good as them and worked just as hard. But I never got that. Nobody ever gave me the time of day.”
The stronger Division 1 programs bypassed him when it came to scholarship money. He received some interest from some lower-level D-1 teams but never found a situation where he felt he’d be able to step in and play right away.
Albano talked it over with his dad. He visited UMB and came away impressed with the coaches and what the campus had to offer. He felt he was connecting with the school on a personal level, and not just as a recruit. And he knew he could step in and play a ton.
“I remember standing on the arena floor in late spring, early summer, telling him, ‘God, we’d love to have you,’ ” recalled Belisle. “When he came to the realization that he wanted to pick a Division 3 school, he had tons to choose from.”
Hey, he even had a glowing endorsement from Keene, his former Junior Pirates teammate.
In his freshman year, the Beacons were Larkin’s team — a dazzling senior who had helped lead a run to the Frozen Four as a sophomore, and that proved beneficial to Albano in more ways than one.
“He was so good and so noticeable out there, he made it hard not to get noticed if you were on the ice with him,” said Albano. “I just had to get him the puck.”
Albano got noticed. Bruins scouts were joined at games by scouts from the Sharks, Senators, Lightning and Oilers. Eventually, he received a phone call and an invite to Bruins development camp over the summer.
“Honestly, I couldn’t have had less of an idea that it was going to happen,” said Albano. “The focus was on Colin, so we just had a lot of exposure.”
“Every scout was in here watching Colin, and [Albano] started to come off the page,” recalled Belisle. “They were saying, ‘Who’s No. 5?’ ”
While the winter battles in the NEHC against powers Norwich, Hobart and Babson figure to be challenging, it’s nothing like what Albano experienced at Bruins camp.
There were 29 players at the four-day camp held at Warrior Ice Arena in late June, 18 from within the Bruins’ organization and 11 others who were invites, like Albano. He found himself skating against players like Nick Wolff from national champion Minnesota Duluth; Karson Kuhlman, who’s now with the Bruins — “How did he go undrafted?” asked Albano — and talented defensemen Axel Andersson and Urho Vaakanainen.
“I don’t even know how to describe it,” said Albano. “It was just a real honor to go. Being from Boston and all that, my parents could come, the guys could come. It was perfect.”
“I think the Bruins thing gave him that belief that [playing pro] was tangible,” said Belisle. “He went out there and actually played with those guys. He touched it and felt it.
“He did well and they told him he did well.”
After two straight first-team All-Conference selections, he figures to again be one of the top players in the NEHC this winter. “He’s not a guy you can miss,” noted Norwich coach Cam Ellsworth.
Ellsworth did miss him, in a sense. Prior to taking the head job at Norwich and guiding the Cadets to a league title and national runner-up finish in his first season, he was a top assistant at UMass Lowell, where Albano was recruited, though not heavily enough to suit the player.
Last year, it was UMB winning the regular-season title in the NEHC but getting bounced by Hobart in the semis, and Norwich hitting its stride at the right time to skate off with the tournament title and make the NCAA run.
Both Albano and the Cadets figure to have starring roles in the league this winter.
“Just a commanding presence on the blue line,” said Ellsworth. “I thought he was a phenomenal player, an outstanding puck-mover, but how he commanded the game last year — just a really rare facet in a player.”
The ice was back in the rink inside the Clark Athletic Center when practice began in mid-October.
Belisle is beginning his 14th year as head coach at UMB. In 2006-07, he took over a team that was coming off a winless season and slowly, steadily built it into a conference contender. The first four seasons were losing ones. But the last nine have all been winners, with the Beacons going 157-71-17 and only one time not finishing above .500 in NEHC play.
So there’s always an aim to contend for the league title, if not win it. There’s good returning production up front, a group led by senior co-captain Nolan Redler (Winchester, Mass.), who led the team in goals (15), assists (19) and points (34) and was named an All-America alongside Albano.
Big winger Zack Bross (9-15-24) has crafted two superb campaigns. Goaltending also is an asset, with Bailey MacBurnie of Beverly, Mass. (1.85 goals-against average, .926 save percentage) back.
If there’s a question mark early it’s on defense, where Albano will be counted on to lead a young group that should feature multiple freshmen in the lineup most nights. There are six freshman defensemen on the roster.
“It’s a different, exciting feel,” said Albano. “We feel that this year we really have the group, the depth, the goaltending, the leadership, all that … it’s real exciting. Plus the new ‘D,’ they play confident, they play fast and they move the puck really well.”
Keene, a co-captain, played with Albano in his second-to-last year of juniors, in Portland. He marvels at what the player could do then, and does even better now.
“He dominated the game in all aspects,” said Keene. “He sees the ice so much better than other players. He’s incredibly patient with the puck. You play with him and see him do certain things, and you’re just blown away at how he can be that patient and still make that play.”
He might not have turned the right heads in the USHL. But he plans on turning others for years to come.
“The sky’s the limit from here,” said Albano. “The way I went into the camp was, I have nothing to lose — because I really didn’t have anything to lose. … And I never once questioned that this would be the end of my hockey career.”
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