Nick Fohr is in his 12th season with USA Hockey’s National Team Development Program. This is his first season as head coach. He patrols the bench for the U-17 team.
The 45-year-old has had a front-row seat to some of the United States’ best young talent. Early on, there was Jack Eichel (North Chelmsford, Mass.), Dylan Larkin and Auston Matthews. More recently there was Jack Hughes, Cole Caufield and Trevor Zegras.
This season has provided Fohr with something he’s never witnessed before.
Through 41 games, leading his squad in goals (40) and points (69) is Cole Eiserman, a 16-year-old from Newburyport, Mass.
“His release is like nothing I’ve seen before,” Fohr said of Eiserman’s shot.
Eiserman has had no trouble generating headlines in his time at USA Hockey’s campus in Plymouth, Mich. In November, Eiserman’s U-17 team won the championship at the World Under-17 Hockey Challenge. His 12 goals tied Alex Ovechkin’s tournament record. Eiserman’s 20 points in the tournament rank second all-time in scoring (James Hagens, his linemate, set the record with 21).
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“To get to be who Alex Ovechkin is, he’s got a ways to go,” Fohr said. “At this age, he’s done something similar to what a future Hall of Famer has done, and that’s pretty cool for kids to have their name said in the same sentence as those guys.”
As Eiserman garnered comparisons to Ovechkin, his name recognition for the 2024 NHL Draft grew even more. Even though the event is more than 365 days away, the 5-foot-11, 192-pound winger is at the top of his class.
Corey Pronman of The Athletic’s way-too-early ranking of the 2024 draft prospects in November had Eiserman at No. 3. Later that same month, TSN’s Craig Button listed Eiserman as his No. 1 prospect.
“It’s definitely cool,” Eiserman said of being ranked so high in NHL draft discussions. “You dream about the NHL ever since you start putting on skates, so it’s cool. You try not to think about it much because you just try to be in the moment. But it’s definitely cool.”
It’s a journey that began a long time ago. Even for a 16-year-old.
Family influences
Cole Eiserman used to head down to his basement in his family’s Newburyport, Mass., home to shoot pucks.
But he wanted to shoot the real pucks. Not the blue ones or the softer ones and not a street hockey biscuit either, but the regulation black pucks that his brothers would shoot.
Ed Hill, a second-round pick of the Nashville Predators in 1999, is his cousin and used to own a hockey clinic at nearby Graf Rink. Hill snagged a picture of Eiserman on a skating treadmill looking to get some extra reps in. The Eiserman family remembers the photo fondly.
So, why is any of this notable? Of course, hockey players take pride in shooting extra pucks and putting in the work to train off the ice.
Well, Eiserman was 3 and 4 years old when this was all taking place.
“Cole, at that age, loved it,” Bill, his father, said.
It also helped that Eiserman, a twin whose brother, Caden, attends Newburyport High School and plays defense for the school’s hockey team, grew up with three older brothers. The oldest is William (Billy Jr.), who played at UMass Lowell from 2011-13. He followed that up with some time playing for the Chicago Steel in the USHL and then 2013-16 at Bentley. After Billy Jr., came Chris, who spent two seasons as a goalie for SUNY Fredonia.
The closest non-twin brother to Eiserman in age is Shane, who is over 10 years older. While they were never close enough in age to be in school together, the gap did create one advantage.
As Eiserman was growing up in youth hockey, Shane was charting his own path toward the NHL. After stops at St. John’s Prep and Cushing Academy, Shane went to the NTDP. Then came the Dubuque Fighting Saints of the USHL, which helped him get selected in the fourth round by the Ottawa Senators in the 2014 NHL Entry Draft. After that, Shane spent four years at UNH.
Because Durham, N.H., is only a 35-minute drive from Newburyport, and the rest of Hockey East teams aren’t much further, Eiserman and his family attended almost every game.
“Honestly having the older brothers was kind of a big step for me ahead of everyone else just because I knew the game and loved it from a very young age,” Eiserman said.
Eiserman spent his Mite years in Newburyport before spending most of his youth hockey years with the Middlesex Islanders. Then came the next big influence on Eiserman’s hockey career: Sidney Crosby.
“Crosby was the big one for me,” Eiserman said regarding NHL players he watched. “I remember I wore a Sidney Crosby jersey everywhere.”
So when Shattuck-St. Mary’s, where Crosby played for a season in 2002-03, came calling, it was an easy decision for Eiserman. He also had family in Minnesota.
“I was really excited,” Eiserman said of going to Shattuck St. Mary’s. “Honestly right away I wanted to go there just because of how awesome the hockey is there.”
Eiserman took to Shattuck as pigs take to mud. Truthfully, Eiserman might have taken to Shattuck St. Mary’s a bit better than pigs take to mud.
As a 14-year-old with the U-14 team, Eiserman posted an incredible 97 goals and 154 points in 50 games. It was obvious Eiserman was advanced, so at the start of the next season, he moved up to the U-18 team as a 15-year-old. So did teammate Macklin Celebrini, who’s also a top 2024 NHL draft prospect and committed to Boston University.
Eiserman didn’t skip a beat. The kid from Newburyport posted 56 goals and 86 points in 53 games. This, again, as a 15-year-old.
“It was really cool being with the older guys and being around them, which was awesome,” Eiserman said. “Playing was hard because everyone was older, but you learned a lot, which was good.”
His 240 points in 103 games caught the attention of many in the hockey world, but especially the NTDP.
“We’ve got our scouting staff that does all that,” Fohr said of recruiting Eiserman. “But Cole, I don’t think, was overly difficult for them to find. He’s been known across the country for a handful of years now just with everything he’s done and his youth hockey career.
“He’s turned heads everywhere he’s been.”
And as for that love for Crosby? It’s continued.
“If you ask literally any of my teammates from Shattuck or now, whenever Crosby gets brought up, they laugh and say me because I’m such a big fan of him,” Eiserman said. “I used to get in fights about people saying people were better than him.”
And, just so you know, he still picks Crosby first in fantasy hockey every year.
Choosing Minnesota again
As Eiserman exterminated the competition at Shattuck St. Mary’s, the NTDP staff weren’t the only eyes tracking the skilled winger with the wicked shot — colleges were all over him, and rightfully so.
Eiserman had ties to both Massachusetts and Minnesota, which made his choice for college a toss-up for outsiders.
On Sept. 7, Eiserman committed to the University of Minnesota. The draw to play in the Big Ten was just too big.
“I loved it,” Eiserman said of Minnesota. “Being in Minnesota for two years was awesome and I got to tour there. The hockey culture they have there and all the history and the coaches were awesome, so it felt really right to go there.”
That doesn’t mean he never heavily considered Hockey East.
“Yeah, yeah definitely,” Eiserman said of whether or not he considered Hockey East teams. “Being here would’ve been awesome. I took high considerations into those schools just because I’ve been around it for so long.”
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As Eiserman continues to shine with the NTDP, his stock could rise for the 2024 NHL draft.
“He had kind of been the guy everyone was talking about for a long time, and I hear in Canada they’ve been talking about Connor Bedard for a handful of years, (Nathan) MacKinnon and (Connor) McDavid,” Fohr said. “Cole’s been the guy in the States lately that they’ve been talking about.”
That’s a lot of pressure on a teenager, and Eiserman won’t be the first to go through it. Fortunately for Eiserman, Fohr and the NTDP have a lot of experience in dealing with that.
“It’s just part of their overall development,” Fohr said. “We do it with all of our kids, trying to teach them what it takes to be a pro, and that’s all part of it. It’s just our normal things we do as far as trying to teach them to be that pro, how to deal with media, how to deal with success, how to deal with failure. That’s the big one a lot of these kids haven’t dealt with — failure.
“We’ve now jumped them into such a high level so quickly, they’re (dealing) with failure, they’re dealing with hard days and tough days. How do they react to that? How do they build from that? It’s a process. It’s really what we do well at the NTDP. We put them in situations to fail and face adversity and allow them to grow and learn from that at these young ages, and they have that built into them by the time they get to the higher levels.”
Despite the palpable success Eiserman has had in his first season with the NTDP, he hasn’t been without adversity. He’s playing against older players. The U-17 team’s schedule is comprised of USHL teams and some of the best squads from around the world.
“It’s way harder to score now, right?” Fohr said. “He still gets his opportunity and he’s got such a god-given ability to score that he’s continued to do that. But the guys now are older, bigger, stronger, faster, smarter. They’re more experienced. They know who he is. They can stop him, and he hasn’t had to deal with that piece before. … He’s seen plenty of adversity this year.”
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Eiserman, like most young hockey players, one day dreamed of playing in the NHL. He’s just a few years from that most likely becoming a reality.
These days, he’s trying not to get ahead of himself.
“You can’t get to where you want to unless you really deal with what you’re doing right now,” Eiserman said. “Taking every day in the moment. When you’re a kid you think about playing in the NHL, but you don't think about going high. You try to play the game when you’re in the moment. I try to do that.”
