The Providence College Hockey All-Rhode Island Team

The Providence College Hockey All-Rhode Island Team

Like most college hockey programs now, Providence College players come from junior hockey leagues, hockey prep schools, foreign countries, and transfers from other colleges. For decades, however, the primary source of players was high school hockey.  And, many of PC’s players came from its own backyard, Rhode Island high school hockey. Rhode Island High school hockey has produced scores of All-Americans and NHL players.

Today’s trivia:  What Rhode Island hockey player in the 1980s was the first American-born player to be the first pick in an NHL draft?  What year was he drafted and which NHL team drafted him?

 

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PC Hockey All-Time Rhode Island Team

Approximately 115 RI high school hockey players have played for PC since 1950. Here are my choices for the best RI players to ever play for the Friars.

Goalie

In the last several decades, PC has recruited great goalies from outside of RI, but two local RI high schoolers had major impacts on the PC hockey program years ago.

Bob Bellemore or Chris Terreri—who should be on the PC First Team for Rhode Island goalie? You could argue the case for either one, but I am going with Terreri.

Chris Terreri:  Hard to believe that Warwick’s Pilgrim High School, never a hockey power in RI high school hockey, produced Chris Terreri.  But they did, and PC coach Lou Lamoriello snagged Terreri who played during the 1982-86 seasons. His first two seasons he played sparingly behind veteran Marion Proulx, but still had a 11-3 record.

He came into his own in the 1984-85 season, helping the Friars to the NCAA Frozen Four. PC lost 2-1 to #1 RPI in the final, but Terreri was voted the MVP of the tournament after stopping 62 shots in a PC 4-3 three-overtime win against BC and then making 40 saves in the final against RPI. He was selected as the first-team All-American that season and as the second-team in his senior year. He finished his PC career with a 3.11 goals-against average.

Terreri played 14 seasons in the NHL, the longest term of any PC Friar, including two Stanley Cup seasons with the New Jersey Devils.  He is now a goaltending coach with the New York Islanders.

 

Forwards

Rob Gaudreau: Gaudreau, a Lincoln native who starred at Bishop Hendricken, was the son of 1965 Brown All-American Bob Gaudreau.  Rob Gaudreau played for four years at PC from 1988-92, scoring 103 goals and 108 assists for a total of 211 points.  His goal totals, point totals, and 1.45 pts/game are the highest of any forward who has ever played at PC.  He was a second-team All-American in his senior year.

Gaudreau played for five seasons in the pros, including stints with the San Jose Sharks and the Ottawa Senators.

 

Tim Army: PC was able to grab one of the Army brothers who starred for the powerful East Providence Townie teams in the 1970’s.  Tim who played for PC from 1981-85 scored 71 goals along with 108 assists for a total of 179 points. In his senior season, he helped PC win their first Hockey East crown and play with Chris Terreri in the Frozen Four. He was an All-American and a Hobey Baker finalist.

The Army roots in PC hockey are deep and generational.  Tim’s dad, Tom Army, captained the 1951-52 PC team. Tim’s son, Derek, had a successful four years at PC in 2010-14, scoring 76 points.  Three generations of Army family hockey players lacing up their skates for the Friars—all of them successful.

Tim Army had a long career coaching.  He has been an assistant coach with Anaheim and Washington, in addition to two coaching stints with PC.

    

Paul Guay:  Guay led Mount Saint Charles to 4 state titles and 2 New England titles before being recruited by Coach Lou Lamoriello to play for PC.  Guay played two seasons for the Friars, 1981-83; in just two seasons, he tallied 57 goals and 48 assists for a total of 105 points.  His 34 goals in the ’82-83 season, along with Rob Gaudreau’s 34 in the 1991-92 season, are the most goals in one season by a Friar.  The ‘82-83 team, the highest-scoring PC team ever with 225 goals and a 33-10 record, went to the Frozen Four but was beaten in the semis by Wisconsin, the eventual champion that year.

Paul Guay was a lamplighter, a gifted skater and hard-working goal scorer who was a threat to score on every shift. He was only 18 when he scored his PC single season record of 34 goals.

Guay left PC after his sophomore year to join the US National team and was the first PC hockey player to play in the Olympics.  He then played ten years in the NHL and AHL.  He remains a PC fan and is a captain in the Pawtucket Fire Department.

 

 

Defensemen

Ron Wilson: The Wilson brothers propelled the East Providence High School hockey team into a powerhouse team in the 1970s.  Ron, the oldest, played at PC from 1972-77.  He was a scoring defenseman, and he holds the PC record for career points with 250 points. He also holds the NCAA record for a defenseman in career points (250), assists (172), and most points in a single season (87).

Ron Wilson may have been the most talented hockey player ever to ever play for the Friars.  He was a Jimmy Walker on ice skates, leaving opposing defensemen looking for their jock straps.

Wilson went on to coach several NHL teams—Anaheim, Washington, San Jose, and Toronto—from 1993 to 2012, recording 648 regular season wins and 45 playoff wins. He was inducted into the US Hockey Hall of Fame in 2017.

 

Jim Colucci:  Jim was a 4-year starting blue liner for the Friars in the 1978-82 seasons after an all-state career at Mount Saint Charles.  While at PC, he scored 19 goals and 64 assists for a total of 83 points.  Unlike Ron Wilson, who never skated a shift he didn’t think he could score a goal, Colucci was a hard-nosed, defense-first kind of player.  He loved to check and intimidate the opposition’s forwards, which also enabled him to usually lead the Friars in penalty minutes when he played.

 

Other Notable Rhode Island PC Hockey Players

Bob Bellemore: La Salle all-stater in 1958 and 1959, Bellemore was a goalie who only played two seasons at PC, 1963-65, compiling a 33-18 record with an overall goals-against average of 3.07/game.  He led the hockey Friars to their first-ever NCAA Frozen Four in 1964 before they were beaten 3-2 by Michigan.  That team put PC on the hockey map in Division 1 hockey.  And, it was a humble time for PC hockey with home games at the RI Auditorium and practices often held on flooded campus parking lots.

Randy Wilson and Brad Wilson: Providence Reds coach Larry Wilson could have sent his hockey sons to any of the Catholic high school hockey powers in the 1970s.  But Larry Wilson was determined to have his sons play local at East Providence High School where they had an outstanding coach in Joe Sprague.

PC snared more than just Ron Wilson from those super East Providence teams of the 1970’s.  They also landed Ron’s younger brothers—Brad who played 1974-78, totaling 159 points, and Randy who played from 1975-79, totaling164 points.

For two years, the three Wilson brothers’ careers at PC overlapped, the 1975-76 and 1976-77 seasons.  For those two seasons, PC enjoyed the Wilson brothers hat trick.  In the 1976-77 season, the Wilson brothers were the first, second, and third top scorers for the Friars (Ron-62 points, Brad-43 points, and Randy-41 points).

Mike Omicioli:  Mike Omicioli starred at LaSalle and then played at PC.    Mike was a smooth skating center for PC 1995-99, scoring 49 goals and 89 assists for a total of 138 points, while the Friars won 71 games in that stretch.

Noel Acciari: Noel Acciari was a former star at Bishop Hendricken and winner of the 2007 state title against Mount St. Charles.  After two years at the Kent School, Acciari enrolled at PC. In his senior year, the 2014-15 season, he blossomed into a scoring leader and accounted for 15 goals and 17 assists.  The Friars went to the Frozen Four that year and beat Boston University 4-3 in the championship game.  Acciari was the only Rhode Islander on the 2015 NCAA Championship team.

Acciari achieved success with the Boston Bruins in the NHL for three seasons before signing with the Florida Panthers. He is now playing for the Pittsburgh Penguins.

The Gaffney Brothers:  Besides the Wilson brothers, the only other RI hockey family to have three brothers play at PC was the Gaffney family brothers—Charlie (1962-65), Mike (1969-71), and Kevin (1972-76).  After PC, all the Gaffneys have had long careers coaching high school and youth hockey in RI.  Mike coached at all the public high schools in Warwick and later for LaSalle’s 2015 state championship team.

Sara DeCosta-Hayes.  If you are from Rhode Island, you know that Sara DeCosta was an all-state goalie for Toll Gate High in 1996—for the boys’ team.  She not only made history at Toll Gate, but later became the best goalie in the history of the PC women’s hockey team in the late 1990’s. And just to cement her national reputation, she was the goalie for the gold medal-winning USA team in the 1998 Olympics.

Dick Ernst:  Dick Ernst was an early varsity player for the PC hockey team. Playing for three seasons and graduating in 1961.  He then went on to become a hockey and tennis coach in RI high schools for over 50 years.

His most unusual high school hockey coaching maneuver occurred in December 1964 when he was coaching an outmanned North Providence sextet facing a powerful Cranston East team that featured four future all-staters.  To try and limit the massacre, Ernst came up with the idea of employing two goalies at the same time in front of the NP net! His coaching strategy received national attention in the sports media, and it worked to a degree. North Providence lost 12-4, instead of 20-4.

Lou Lamoriello: Most Rhode Islanders are aware of Lamoriello’s PC coaching career and subsequent longer NHL career with the New Jersey Devils, the Toronto Maple Leafs, and currently with the NY Islanders.  Johnston native Lou started his 68-year hockey career in 1956 with La Salle before playing at Providence College.  In his three varsity years, 1960-63, he was an outstanding forward, notching 118 total points in just three years.  PC coach at the time, Tom Eccleston, then hired Lou to be an assistant coach.  To pay for the family's groceries, Lou’s day job until 1970 was teaching math at Johnston High.

From 1968 to 1983, Lou was head coach of the Friars, coaching 440 games, winning 249 for a .562 winning percentage, and appearing in the 1983 Final Four.

He helped to form Hockey East before heading off to become the GM/President for the NJ Devils, where he won Stanley Cups in 1995, 2000, and 2003.  In his current GM/ President role for the NY Islanders, he recently hired former PC goalie Chris Terreri to help coach the Islanders goalies.

 

Today’s Trivia Answers:  The Minnesota North Stars selected 18-year-old Brian Lawton of Cumberland and Mount Saint Charles as the first draft pick in the 1983 NHL draft. Not only was Lawton the first American-born player to be picked first in the NHL draft, he is also the only high school player to be a number one pick.

Lawton spent 10 years in the NHL with several teams. His best year was the 1986-87 season with the North Stars, when he had 21 goals and 43 assists. He was the GM of the Tampa Lightning from 2008-2010. He is currently an on-air analyst for the NHL network.