The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Red Wings draft goalie Petruzzelli in third round
Keith Petruzzelli grew up a Boston Bruins fan. On Saturday, he was happy to pull on the cap and jersey of the Detroit Red Wings, the team that selected him in the third round (88th overall) of the NHL draft.
In the meantime, he’ll don the gold-and-blue of Quinnipiac, where Petruzzelli is set to begin summer courses next month in advance of the fall semester.
Petruzzelli, a resident of Wilbraham, Massachusetts, was the eighth goaltender taken in the draft, six of whom were selected in the third round. He’d been ranked second amongst North American goalies by the NHL’s Central Scouting Bureau prior to this weekend’s two-day draft at Chicago’s United Center.
Also drafted on Saturday was Greenwich’s Phil Kemp, a defenseman set to enroll at Yale in the fall. He went to Edmonton in the seventh round.
Jake Oettinger, who beat both Quinnipiac and Yale last winter as a freshman at Boston University, was the first goalie taken, going to Dallas with the 26th pick of the first round.
Petruzzelli, 18, is 6-foot-6 and 180 pounds. He became Quinnipiac’s secondhighest NHL draft pick. John Doherty, who played 16 games for the Bobcats in the 2006-07 season, was a second-round pick of Toronto in 2003. It also marks the fifth straight season a Quinnipiac player or incoming recruit was selected in the NHL draft.
Petruzzelli played two seasons at Springfield Cathedral, another at South Kent, and played for Muskegon of the USHL last winter. He was USA Hockey’s goaltender of the year.
He and older brother D.J. committed to Quinnipiac in December 2013, and both will begin play for the Bobcats when practice commences in September.
Kemp, 18, is 6-3 and 201 pounds. He spent two seasons at the Brunswick School before joining the U.S. National Developmental Program. His grandfather, Phil, played football and baseball at Yale, a teammate of George H.W. Bush on the Bulldogs 1948 College World Series runner-up club. His great uncles, Frank (class of 1942) and Bruce Kemp (class of 1945), were also Yale athletes.