Rookie winger flashes promise
Anthony Angello tastes success
As a gangly kid growing up just down the road from Syracuse University, at the time a college basketball powerhouse under coach Jim Boeheim, Anthony Angello might have appeared to be destined to hit the hardwood for the Orange eventually.
There was only one small problem: He was terrible at basketball.
“Awful,” he said, with a laugh, Friday. “I played in gym class and maybe a year [of organized basketball] when I was real young. I did not pursue it after that.”
Instead, Angello, now a rookie winger with the Penguins, focused on two other sports while sprouting in upstate New York — hockey and lacrosse.
“Actually, my dad says I was better at lacrosse,” Angello said. “I liked lacrosse because it was basically hockey on the field. You could just run guys over.”
After his freshman year of high school, he decided he only wanted to run guys over on ice. Thus began a long, winding journey from Manlius, N.Y., to Pittsburgh, with stops along the way in Rochester, N.Y., Nebraska and the Ivy League.
In the coming weeks, that road might lead back to Wilkes-Barre/ Scranton. But the 23-year-old, who scored his first career NHL goal Tuesday in the Penguins’ win against the Toronto Maple Leafs, has learned one valuable lesson these past few weeks.
“I can play in this league. I can be successful,” Angello said. “Just coming here with the right mindset — playing hard and doing things the right way and playing to my strengths — will allow me and the team to have success. That builds confidence. Confidence builds success. Then, it’s a snowball effect from there.”
Angello first stepped on the ice at the age of 2, two years before his family moved from Albany to Manlius. His uncle, Jason Hover, played hockey at Air Force Academy. Angello was drawn to the challenge of hockey, in part because it made him different.
“I thought it was cool and unique,” he said. “You can’t just wake up and say, ‘I’m going to play hockey,’ and throw on the skates and go in the backyard.”
In seventh and eighth grade, when things started to get serious for Angello, he started skating for a program in Rochester, 100 miles west of Manlius. After that, he played high school and Junior B hockey in the Syracuse area.
Angello was always among the tallest kids in his class. He was listed at 6-4 during his two years with the Omaha Lancers of the United States Hockey League.
Where does he get his height from? Angello shrugged. The younger of his two sisters, Ava, is already 6-0 and could play Division I lacrosse in three years. But his parents, David and Pamela, are both around 5-10. He guesses his long limbs come from his mother’s side of the family, given that she has relatives who reach 66.
After his senior year of high school, the Penguins drafted Angello in the fifth round in 2014, knowing the pick might take a long time to pay dividends.
He spent one more season in Omaha before heading off to college at Cornell. He originally was a pre-med major. That lasted one semester before he switched to applied economics and management with a concentration in finance.
“I did it for about two weeks and said, ‘This is way too hard,’” he said, chuckling. “I decided to do the business route because [if I didn’t make it as a player] it would keep me in hockey — and so I didn’t have to go back to finish premed and go to medical school and finally get to be a doctor when I’m 50 or 60.”
Angello scored 36 goals in three seasons at Cornell, piled up 119 penalty minutes and caught the eye of another Penguins prospect who skated for Brown.
“Something I’ve always noticed with Ant is he is willing to throw his weight around,” Sam Lafferty said of Angello. “Going back to playing against him in college, our defensemen had to know when he was on the ice because he forechecked so hard and he was physical . ... He knows his game and tries to play to his strengths.”
Angello turned pro in 2018 and scored 16 goals in 65 games last season for the Penguins’ AHL affiliate in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. He had that many goals in 20 fewer games when he got his first call to the NHL Jan. 30. He has since appeared in five Penguins games
Now 6-5 and 210 pounds, Angello still is learning how to harness his size fully.
“I’ve learned how to use my body this year to hold onto more pucks and, instead of hitting people just to knock them over and creating a big sound, I’m hitting to go through hands and create turnovers,” he said. “Using my size and protecting pucks has allowed me to have way more success offensively, and in general.”
Penguins coach Mike Sullivan said after practice Friday at PPG Paints Arena that the team believes Angello has showed this month that he can be “an effective player in this league,” citing his size, skating ability and willingness to get in on the forecheck.
But to do that, the coach added, Angello must make more strides mentally.
“It’s more about just decisionmaking, awareness, all of those things that players need to adjust to the pace of the game,” he said. “I don’t mean that physically. I mean how quickly players in this league process the game. [It’s] the anticipation skills and the awareness away from the puck and things of that nature.”
Angello, a healthy scratch for the shutout loss Thursday in Toronto, could be sent back to the AHL soon. Reinforcements might arrive before the NHL’s trade deadline Monday or when Nick Bjugstad, another big body, rejoins the team after a lengthy injury absence.
“If something happens where I do get sent down, I have to continue to play the same way that got me up here and, hopefully, I’m not down there too long,” he said. “I worked extremely hard to get here and I’m willing to do whatever it takes to get here [permanently] . ... I know I can do it.”