Sam Colangelo’s origin story starts on a frozen pond in his backyard. He was 13 months old when his father, Mark, put him on skates and held him up as he took his first halting steps on the ice at Pillings Pond in Lynnfield, Mass.
“I fell in love with it right away,’’ Sam says. “He was in his glory,’’ remembers his dad. And so it began.
Fast forward to Oct. 7, 2020, the day that Sam, now a Northeastern University freshman, experienced a moment that all young players dream of. He was selected by the Anaheim Ducks in the second round, 36th pick, of the NHL draft.
Projected by scouts to be a scoring winger with size, Colangelo was the first New Englander selected.
Watching with family at home in Stoneham, Mass., Colangelo said he had a good feeling as the Ducks got ready to make their pick.
“Once I heard my name, it was all just a blur. It was one of the best feelings I’ve ever had. My mom and dad gave me a hug. My mom was pretty emotional. It’s something I worked for my entire life. It was special,’’ says Colangelo, whose phone blew up with more than 300 congratulatory texts.
His first hockey idols were not NHL superstars that he saw on TV. As a toddler Colangelo loved the youngsters — just seven or so years older than him — who skated for the 1994 Middlesex Islanders, the powerhouse youth hockey team that his cousin Mike Weaver (who lived with the Colangelos) played for and that Mark Colangelo coached.
“Sam, from the time he was a year old, would come to the rink with me. All those kids on that team, they were his heroes,’’ says Mark.
The Colangelos’ house had a big front hallway, which Sam put to good use. By the time he was 2½, he was rarely seen without a stick in his hands. His mom, Karen, sometimes dressed up in hockey equipment to face his shots.
“I hear him in the front hall,’’ says Mark Colangelo. “Now he’s by himself, but he’s yelling for a pass from Brian Morgan (a ’94 Islander who went on to play at Maine and UConn). Then he’s yelling for a pass from Grizzy (ex-Islander Matt Grzelcyk, the Charlestown, Mass., native now of the Boston Bruins). Then he’s yelling at my nephew, ‘Mikey, you’ve got to move that puck.’ Of course, these are all things he hears me saying on the bench.’’
His immersion in the game also included time spent playing what Mark and Karen came to call “house games.’’
“Karen and I are in the office, which is kind of adjacent to this front hallway, and he’d be calling for passes from these imaginary friends. And I’m like, Karen, there’s something wrong with this kid,’’ says Mark, with a laugh.
Of course it wasn’t long before he started playing youth hockey. Though he is a late 2001 birthdate, he skated with older players for three seasons with the 2000 Middlesex Islanders.
A pair of notable linemates during that time were Oliver Wahlstrom (Yarmouth, Maine) and Jake Wise (North Andover, Mass.). Wahlstrom was drafted 11th overall in the first round of the 2018 NHL draft by the New York Islanders and turned pro in 2019 after one season at Boston College. In the same draft, Wise was picked in the third round, 69th overall, by the Chicago Blackhawks. He is a junior at Boston University.
“It was pretty easy for me to just get the puck on the wall and give it to Oliver or Jake and they’d go end to end and score. Got some easy assists,’’ says Sam.
His appetite for the game was insatiable. “I pushed my nephew. I never had to push Sam. I’d come home and he’d be shooting pucks in the driveway. We had 400 or 500 pucks. He’d pull them all out of the net and shoot them again,’’ says Mark.
After the Islanders, Sam played in his age group with the 2001 Boston Junior Eagles and with the South Shore Kings after that. “Sam always could shoot, always could score, even as a young kid. He was able to shoot it harder than everybody else,’’ says John Joyce (Wilbraham, Mass.), Colangelo’s coach with the Junior Eagles.
One of the top players in a strong class of 2001-born Massachusetts players, Colangelo skated for the Junior Bruins during the spring and summer.
Coach Chris Masters (Lexington, Mass.) of the Junior Bruins left a lasting impression. “Even when we were 7 to 8 years old, he was pushing us really hard, maybe saying some things some of the parents didn’t like, but my dad always kind of liked that stuff,” says Sam.
When NHL teams reached out to Masters, a former player at Boston College, in the weeks leading up to the draft, he told them Colangelo stood out even among all the high-achieving players he’s coached.
Masters says: “Sam even as a young kid — Mite, Squirt, Pee Wee — there was never any ego, never any expectation to play on the first line. He was a consummate team player. If we needed him to play wing, he played wing. If we needed him to play in the middle, he’d play in the middle. Defense, wherever we asked him to go.
“Another player who had that similar disposition was (former Junior Bruin) Jack Eichel (North Chelmsford, Mass.). There are a lot of similarities between the two kids. If I were an NHL general manager, one of the things that I would look for is how much does the kid love hockey? Does he live, breathe and sleep it? Sam Colangelo, Jack Eichel, those are kids that just love hockey. They want to be at the rink, they want to be on the ice. They’ll do whatever the coach and the team needs.’’
In 2015-16, Colangelo again played with older players, with the U-16 Junior Bruins. There was interest from prep schools and he considered Brooks and Groton before deciding on Lawrence Academy.
Northeastern associate head coach Jerry Keefe (Billerica, Mass.) was well aware of Colangelo’s potential, and the Huskies landed a commit from him in 2017.
“I knew Sam as a player way back when he was, probably, a Pee Wee. I used to work all those (offseason) camps,’’ says Keefe.
“When he really popped for me was his sophomore year. When he started to grow physically, it was like, ‘Whoa, he’s going to be a ballplayer.’ ’’
Colangelo had interest from New Hampshire, Providence College, UMass and Quinnipiac, but Northeastern was at the top of his list.
“Northeastern was the first school I ever toured when I was in eighth grade. I didn’t get an offer or anything like that, but I fell in love with it and I always wanted to play in the Beanpot. When the offer came a year or two years later, it was kind of a no-brainer,’’ Sam says.
Adds his dad: “We went for a visit there. No offer. My wife, Sam and myself went to Panera Bread. Sam wrote on a napkin, ‘2020 NU commit’ that day. I saved it and I still have it.’’
“The way Coach Keefe described my game to me was the same way I saw it,’’ says Sam. “I knew that he’d be able to help me down the road.’’
Colangelo skated on a high-scoring line at Lawrence Academy with Gunnarwolfe Fontaine (East Greenwich, R.I.) and Neil Shea (Marshfield, Mass.), both of whom will be his teammates again at Northeastern this season. The trio helped the Spartans to the NEPSAC Small-School Championship in 2017-18.
They had chemistry, on and off the ice. “When I was going into Lawrence, he was already there for a year. He kind of taught me about what it’s going to be like and how we’re going to play,’’ says Fontaine, who was drafted by Nashville in the seventh round on the same day Colangelo was picked. “We clicked right away.’’
Shea says the draft hype hasn’t changed Colangelo: “He’s down to earth. He doesn’t act any different, even with all the attention he’s getting.’’
As a linemate, “He’s very smart, he’s big, he can make plays. He has an absolute cannon of a shot. He can protect pucks. Just get him the puck, or if he has it, get open, and he’s going to find you,’’ adds Shea.
After Colangelo scored 19 goals and 48 points in 28 games at Lawrence Academy in 2018-19, the obvious next step was the USHL, where the Chicago Steel had drafted him in the second round.
The Steel made no promises.
“We gave him nothing. We didn’t say, ‘Hey, come here and you’re going to play first line, you’re going to play first power play.’ Just come in here and compete and work,’’ said Chicago GM Ryan Hardy (Madison, Conn.).
Colangelo did all that and more. He finished third in the league in scoring in 2019-20 with 28-30-58 in 44 games.
“His production at five-on-five was unbelievable for a rookie in the USHL in his draft year,’’ says Hardy.
Along the way he erased a question that lingered from prep hockey.
“A lot of people, if they are honest with themselves, saw him play that last year at Lawrence and sometimes were frustrated with him for the effort level that he put out. That kind of got attached to his name, whether fairly or unfairly,’’ says Hardy. Said Northeastern head coach Jim Madigan: “Certainly there were some sleepy games (at Lawrence Academy) that I saw and people were talking about consistency.’’
Colangelo put that to rest — decisively — in Chicago.
“With his play and his production, there’s nothing anybody can say anymore,’’ says Hardy.
Steel head coach Brock Sheahan told New England Hockey Journal’s Leo Scaglione Jr. midway through last season: “Sam is the type of player who can control a game. He’s big in stature, he’s strong, and he has the ability to make plays. When he has the puck on his stick, he’s got a great chance of scoring a goal, but he also has the ability to find his teammates, which is a unique skill-set for a player who can score a lot of goals. He can do both. His play away from the puck has gotten much better, especially since the beginning of the year. He’s a great kid, works hard and is a lot of fun for us to coach.”
Says Madigan: “Everyone develops and matures at a certain age. I scouted 18 years (for the Islanders and Penguins). You see so many players and sometimes you focus in on what a player doesn’t do, instead of what he can do and what attributes does he have that are going to be able to help your team. With Sam, there were a lot of attributes.’’
To Hardy, an indication of Colangelo’s growing maturity and self-awareness came after a game against Madison.
“He had a hat trick and I thought he was terrible,’’ says Hardy. “So I said to him, ‘Hey, what did you think about the game on Friday night?’ He said, ‘I didn’t think I was very good. My detail wasn’t where it needs to be.’ That’s a young man that’s starting to figure it out. He wants to be a player, he wants to be good.’’
Colangelo recalls that his father was visiting at the time.
“I remember that clearly. It was a pretty good week for me. We played in Youngstown on Wednesday and I think I had two or three points, then Madison Friday-Saturday and I think the Friday game I had a hat trick. I knew I didn’t play that well,’’ Sam says.
“Obviously my dad was happy for me. A hat trick in the USHL is a pretty big accomplishment and it was my second one of the year. After the game he was like, nice goals, but maybe try a little harder.
“It ticked me off at the time because it’s my dad and I hadn’t seen him in like a month. But I went back and watched video and I realized that the three goals were really the only good things I did.’’
All part of the learning process, says Keefe: “All players go through that maturity part where they start to figure out what a really good game looks like, and sometimes it’s not based on scoring.”
So how good can Colangelo be?
If he reaches the potential some evaluators believe he possesses, he could be very good.
Colangelo is listed at 6-foot-2, 208 pounds on Northeastern’s roster, but his physique is a work in progress.
“He doesn’t have a shredded body with lean muscle mass throughout,’’ says Hardy. “There’s a huge opportunity for him to continue to grow. You might see 6-2 and 208 and assume that’s a physically finished product, but he doesn’t have a man body yet, which is so intriguing. If this is what he already is, then what is he really going to be when he goes from a boy to a man?’’
One thing is for sure: He’ll get every opportunity at Northeastern. Madigan and his staff are not planning on easing him into the lineup.
“We expect him to be one of our best players, we really do,’’ says Keefe.
Madigan sees big things ahead for Colangelo.
“We’ve talked to him and said, ‘You don’t have to come in here and just dip your toe in the water and be content with playing a regular shift. Look for more. Want more. Demand a lot of yourself.’ And I think he’ll come in and do that.’’
@MarkDivver
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