Forwards James Hagens and Sacha Boisvert, defenseman Will Felicio (Holden, Mass.) and goaltender John Parsons were standout players for Mount Saint Charles’ 15U team last season that lost to Shattuck-St. Mary’s at nationals. All four will not move onto the 16U team.
Instead, Hagens and Parsons will play for the U.S. National U17 team this season, while Boisvert and Felicio head to the USHL.
Mount Saint Charles should be fine. This has become standard procedure for the hockey powerhouse.
“That’s part of the good and bad,” 16U head coach Devin Rask said of the four heading elsewhere.
In just three full seasons, Mount Saint Charles has established itself as one of the top talent factories in the country in the quickly emerging academy hockey model.
While the entire staff plays key roles in developing talent, perhaps no two people are more responsible for evaluating and acquiring that talent at the 14U level than John O’Connor (Hamden, Conn.) and Frank O’Connor (Arlington, Mass.) — and no, they’re not related.
“You’ve got to have an eye for talent and you’ve got to have a personality to build relationships and then you’ve got to be willing to hustle and work,” Rask said. “That’s what John and Frank do.”
Frank is officially the 14U head coach. John is the associate coach and director of player personnel for the program. The two work in tandem, with John spending the most time on the road, eyeing talent and talking with families.
“He’s got a fantastic eye,” Frank said of John. “It’s really his niche with us. He does the bulk of that stuff on the road because he’s good. He’s really good.”
The many days on the road are necessary for Mount to keep up in an ever-competitive academy and prep hockey scene. It doesn’t mean it’s always easy.
“I enjoy it,” John said. “I’m single, I have the time. I don’t have to answer to anyone. It’s a lot. It’s lonely at times when you’re in the middle of Canada in the winter and all you’re doing is going from the hotel to the rink. It’s something that I enjoy doing.
“There’s a saying ‘A bad day in hockey beats a good day doing something else.’ I’d certainly have to agree with that.”
The fruits of John’s travel show in the connection he’s opened between Mount Saint Charles and the state of Minnesota, with its deep reservoir of hockey talent. Typically, an elite player from a different region of the country might not consider an academy that’s been up and running for just over four years.
But things have not gone typically for Mount.
“The elite players have a million and one options,” John said. “I think a big piece of it is kind of the personal touch and being really transparent on how the process is going to work and I think if there’s one thing I give our coaching staff credit for, it’s nothing is given here. Everything has to be earned.”
Players from Minnesota and elsewhere have taken notice as the talent level has risen at Mount Saint Charles.
Conrad Fondrk, from Saint Paul, Minn., will move up to the 15U team this season. Dylan Dean, from Maple Grove, Minn., and Cristian Hernandez, from Woodbury, Minn., will both join the 14U team. All three will have Division 1 colleges knocking on their doors as soon as they can.
Minnesota is just one example. The success at Mount has created pipelines all over the country.
“We kind of massage that pipeline,” John said. “Those pipelines can turn off if you don’t continually get guys, and I’m not saying you have to get guys from Minnesota every single year or guys from Canada every single year.”
Both John and Frank will occasionally get a tap on the shoulder from people around the hockey world alerting them to a can’t-miss prospect who might be a great fit at Mount Saint Charles. They might even introduce them to that player and his family.
It’s no accident that John and Frank have the connections they have. Both had extensive hockey backgrounds before arriving at Mount Saint Charles.
John played Division 3 hockey at SUNY Fredonia before heading to Albany Academy as an assistant coach. The position in Albany was only part-time, so his main job was as a Coca-Cola sales representative. John knew he wanted full-time work in hockey. He scored an interview with Rask and joined him, Scott Gainey and Matt Plante at South Kent. One year later, Rask, Gainey and Plante resigned their positions at South Kent to kick-start the academy model at Mount Saint Charles. The trio wanted John to follow them.
“I kept loyalty to those guys,” John said.
Frank had his own path. While playing college hockey at Southern New Hampshire, he coached the Neponset Valley River Rats U16 split-season team. When the horn sounded on his final college game, the Northern Cyclones came calling to see if he wanted to be an assistant coach and do some recruiting for their junior program.
Listen: Mount Saint Charles on RinkWise podcast
He was there from spring of 2012 to fall of 2018. By the end, he was the general manager of their NCDC team, as well as the director of their academy programs at U15, U16 and U18.
Part of his job description was also to coach the U16 and U18 teams. One of the teams on the schedule was South Kent — a team Frank would use as a measuring stick for his Cyclone teams. On the other side, Rask, Plante and Gainey got a first-hand look at Frank, whom they hired shortly after arriving at Mount.
“If I didn’t have that relationship with Devin and Matt, I never would’ve had the opportunity to come to Mount,” Frank said.
Once Frank and John were onboarded for Mount, they were paired together and the working relationship has flourished ever since. While John spends time on the road, Frank is back on the homefront developing talent on the academy’s baseline team.
“If we hear there’s a good game or good event, we’re going to find a way to get there without putting our team on the back burner,” Frank said. “We’re never going to skip a video session, we’re never going to skip a practice because John and I have to go watch games. We’re going to work it out and figure out the best plan to make sure our current players here are still getting the development that they’re here for.”
Where the duo combines their skills most is when a player visits campus. The player and his family will watch a practice and walk the halls of an academic day at Mount Saint Charles Academy, seeing faculty, future teammates and the hundreds of other students there who are non-hockey players.
“I think Frank and I do an unbelievable job of really just kind of laying out how [the school] works, the nuts and bolts pieces,” John said.
In just over three seasons of hockey, Mount Saint Charles has produced 35 Division 1 commits, as well as eight players committed to play in the CHL. Of those 43 players, eight were NHL draft picks, with the highest selection being Zachary Bolduc, taken 17th overall by the St. Louis Blues in the 2021 NHL Draft.
Word is spreading fast of what’s going on at Mount Saint Charles. While colleges look to the talent on the ice, they are also taking a look behind the bench. Plante, one of the founding members of Mount Saint Charles and head coach of the 18U team, was hired away by Brown University this summer to be an assistant coach. Drew Omicioli (West Warwick, R.I.) was hired to replace him.
Soon those same colleges could shift their eyes to John and Frank.
