Capone ready to live NHL draft dream
The reality that his dream is about to come true hit Nick Capone at some point during the hour-long drive from his East Haven home to the UConn campus in Storrs back in mid-August.
Next week, Capone will achieve something that only a select few New Haven hockey prodigies have accomplished when he is selected in the NHL Draft.
The 18-year-old Capone finished 126th on NHL’s Central Scouting list for North American skaters for Monday’s and Tuesday’s draft. Last year, Nick Abruzzese and Mason Millman both went in the fourth round after being ranked 122nd and 125th among North American skaters.
The first round will be on Tuesday at 7 p.m. Rounds 2-7 will take place on Wednesday, starting at 11:30 a.m.
Capone doesn’t know which round his name will be called or which team will secure his rights, so he is trying to calm his nerves by not thinking about it too much.
“I am already nervous thinking about it,” Capone said. “It is just going to be a crazy feeling.”
When Capone is selected, he will add to the list of New Haven area prospects picked by NHL teams.
New Haven’s John Glynne was selected in the NHL and WHA amateur drafts in 1975, three years later Brian O’Connor was picked by the St. Louis Blues, and in 1985 Southington native Carl Valimont was a 10th round pick by Vancouver.
Things changed the following year when Cheshire’s Brian Leetch was the ninth overall pick by the New York Rangers. New Haven area products Matt DelGuidice and Joe Aloi were selected in the fourth and sixth rounds in 1987. Mike Pomichter of North
Haven and Todd Hall of Hamden were among the top 53 selections in 1991, Eric Boguniecki of West Haven was picked in the eighth round in 1993.
Hamden’s Jonathan Quick, still the No. 1 goalie for the Los Angeles Kings, was a steal in the third round of the 2005 draft. More recently, New Haven’s Adam Erne, a second-round pick in 2013, played parts of three seasons with the recently crowned Stanley Cup champion Tampa Bay Lightning before spending the 2019-20 campaign with the rebuilding Detroit Red Wings.
“I wouldn’t say any NHL players got me into hockey. I would say my dad definitely did,” Capone said. “Watching some players, the Rangers are my favorite team so definitely watching them more and more.
“When I was like 11, I decided that this is what I want to do and I started to work for it. I was scoring more and changing the level I was on and continuing to do good and that was when I started to realize I could do something.”
Capone began challenging himself with the teams he played on. When he was 12, he crossed paths with Steve Novodor, a youth hockey coachwho witnessed Capone transform from being a big, physical presence to a complete player learning to use his frame that now is listed at 6-foot-2, 202 pounds.
“I thought he was a big body, he had good skill to his game,” Novodor said. “He put a lot of work on the ice, off the ice, in the summer really training hard and just doing a lot of the things that he really needed to do to be the player that he is today just with his work ethic and the way he kind of approached just wanting to be the best on the ice. I think for him, he has always gotten better each year. He’s never been satisfied with where he is at and I think that has gone a long way for him.”
That hard work was evident when he burst onto the scene with 40 goals and 48 assists as a freshman at East Haven High School to earn All-State honors. He added 33 goals and 43 assists in 57 games during his two seasons at The Salisbury School, a program that counts six-year NHL defenseman Alex Biega, former NHL forward Paul Carey, and former Yale forward Mark Arcobello (24 goals in 139 NHL games) among its alumni. The next step was a big one as he left Connecticut to join the USHL, where Capone had seven goals, 12 assists, and 96 penalty minutes in 34 games for the Tri-City Storm in 2019-20 season.
“I think it is tremendous for him,” said Novodor, a national championship winning coach with the powerhouse Junior Bulldogs program. “Going to a school like Salisbury, a prep school, he kind of learned how to be a student-athlete away from home at a young age and I think it helped him mature and grow as a person and as a player. Obviously playing in the USHL which is the top junior league, and to be as much of an impact player as he was with Tri-City, maybe not so much always putting up points on the board but just his physical presence in the lineup and making things happen around him. I think he learned how to become a man at a young age, which has allowed him to go to UConn sooner than some kids are going to school.”