Brandon Carlo walked into the locker room after another strong first period and couldn’t believe his eyes — or ears.
Carlo, the captain of his Colorado Thunderbirds U16 AAA team during the 2012-13 season, saw his teammates having a grand time with music blaring throughout the room. There was just one minor issue.
It was the first intermission of a tournament game — a semifinal, no less.
“They were blasting music in between periods like we had already won,” Carlo said. “I was like, ‘Can we turn that (stuff) off?’”
“They” were a room full of kids with dreams of playing professional hockey, but it was a reminder that they were still teenagers. Carlo quickly realized the culprits were future Avalanche forward Fredrik Olofsson and Lightning forward Mikey Eyssimont, who, along with Carlo, now a Bruins defenseman, were three of the five players from this particular Thunderbirds squad who reached the NHL.
The Thunderbirds have crafted a proud and successful history of developing players who matriculate to higher levels in the sport since the program began in 2002, but the 2012-13 U16 AAA team was a special one.
“Just trying to keep all of those guys in line when we were winning all the time was so hard,” Carlo said. “We had some fun personalities. We definitely had a confidence and a swagger that year, which was fun. At times I look back and wish I had more of that still. That group was incredible.
“Freddy and Mikey were always the (stuff) disturbers. They were just having fun and living in the moment and I respect it now.”
Carlo, Eyssimont and Olofsson were all born in 1996. They were joined by a diminutive kid from the ‘97 group, Troy Terry, as part of a collection of talent that produced one of the Thunderbirds’ most dominant seasons at any age level.
“I mean, it’s crazy to look back now, but I think then we knew how good of players we had,” said Terry, who now plays for the Ducks. “But to kind of take a step back and look now at how many guys made it to the NHL, it is pretty incredible. Those are all guys that I root for and happy to see we’re all doing well and playing at the highest level.”
Participation in youth hockey grew in Colorado after the Avalanche arrived from Quebec, with notable spikes after Stanley Cup runs in 1996 and 2001. The Thunderbirds were born after the second title.
It started with two teams in 2002, but began to grow a few years later until there was a club for each age group from 11 to 18.
“It took a few years to really get competitive and to where we were at,” said Angelo Ricci, who is the executive director of the Thunderbirds program and a skills coach for the Philadelphia Flyers. “We’ve had a lot of former Avs help our program, from (Joe) Sakic, (Pierre) Turgeon, (Adam) Foote, Milan Hejduk and others. The list goes on. Ken Klee. It was really nice to build a rapport with those guys. They were doing it for the right reasons, to help out the kids.”
The Thunderbirds were a formidable program by 2012, and Ricci’s U16 AAA team often had high expectations and successful results. None of the ‘96 kids were teenage phenoms along the lines of some of their opponents — namely future No. 1 pick Auston Matthews with the Arizona Bobcats. But there was no denying they were deep and talented.
Ricci knew early on that this group had the goods.
“I remember our first practice with those guys,” he said. “Troy Terry was like 125, 130 pounds soaking wet and not very tall yet. Then they start practicing and playing some 3-on-3, doing some drills and you see well, he’s smart and he’s got a good stick, strong on the puck. You could see bits and pieces with all of these guys.
“I’d love to say, ‘Yeah, I saw (a bunch of future NHL guys).’ What we saw was growth in their game and the ability to absorb information and want to be coached.”
One of the most talented youth hockey teams ever assembled in the state of Colorado could have been even greater, had a rising star in the coaching ranks not intervened. It was a powerhouse group, but its leading scorer from the previous year left the team early in the season.
Dylan Gambrell scored 12 points in his first four games before joining Dubuque in the United States Hockey League. The coach in Dubuque was Jim Montgomery, who took over the DU hockey program one year later.
“I was kind of not happy about that,” Ricci said with a hearty laugh. “No, it was our job to help the kids move up.”
Even without Gambrell, who went on to play at DU for Montgomery and has more than 200 NHL games on his resume, and Dominic Turgeon, who decided to play for Portland in the WHL that year, this Thunderbirds team was a juggernaut.
“That year, we were so good defensively. If we played about 70 games, I don’t know if we were allowing a goal per game,” Ricci said. “And we were scoring four, five or more almost every night. One thing is they really worked. We had some great practices, and that’s where you really saw their games grow.”
Ricci estimated the team’s final record was 65-4. The Thunderbirds went weeks at a time without losing.
There were days when they showed up at the rink, particularly against an opponent from the region, and the outcome was almost a foregone conclusion. For Carlo, one game against the Colorado Rampage stood out.
“I’ll never forget that one,” said Carlo, who grew up playing with some of the kids on the Rampage before switching to the Thunderbirds. “We knew we should be winning that game, and the other team kind of knew, too. We played them in a full-on soccer game, like full field, before the hockey game. We were just outside and I don’t know how exactly it came about, but it felt like there was more on the line with that soccer game.”
Besides being locker room DJs, Eyssimont and Olofsson were the team’s top two scorers and often played on a line with Terry. He has had the most decorated NHL career to date of the bunch, having scored 60 goals for Anaheim over the two previous seasons even though he was a fifth-round NHL draft pick.
“The joke between Mikey and I was always that we showed (Terry) the way,” Olofsson said. “A lot of guys maybe didn’t have the closest friends from school, because AAA (hockey) demanded so much time that we spent so much time with each other. We were just having a blast. It was super competitive within the team just to like, do stuff — to produce points, score goals, everything else. It was a race to get as much as possible.”
The AAA hockey life is not an easy one. There is a ton of travel, with several in-season tournaments, plus the teams in the Rocky Mountain region are spread out to begin with.
Håkan Olofsson has three sons who have all played hockey since they were little. Fredrik’s older brother, Gustav, played in the NHL for the Seattle Kraken and currently plays for their AHL club. Håkan has watched a lot of competitive youth hockey teams from different parts of the world.
The Olofsson kids played in Sweden, Austria and San Jose before the family settled in the Denver area.
“That team was very strong. They were a winning machine,” Håkan said. “Our favorite memories were less about the results — even though they usually won — and more about the camaraderie that we saw grow with the boys and the families that kept everything together. The entire parent group was great. We just had a good time together traveling to these tournaments.”
The Olofsson kids lived in Broomfield, but practices and home games were at Big Bear Ice Arena in Denver and Family Sports Center in Centennial. The Carlos lived in Colorado Springs, and Gambrell billeted with them until he left for the USHL.
That meant a lot of long car rides and long nights at the rink, particularly when they were stuck with a late practice time. Håkan noted that sometimes those late nights occurred simply because the guys on the team enjoyed hanging out together long after practice.
“Our parents were happy when we started to get our licenses,” Fredrik Olofsson said. “You’d get out of school and do your homework in the car if your parents were driving. Just hit the road and be at the rink until whenever. Maybe get home at like 10 (p.m.).
“We’d always be on the ice late because of school. We’d get done at 8:30, 9 and you’re just hurrying to get to Qdoba before it closes.”
Angie Carlo was the team’s manager, so she handled the logistics when they were on the road. She also drove her son and Gambrell to Denver from the Springs for practices and games, while also picking up goalie Cale Morris in Larkspur along the way.
One of her favorite memories from Brandon’s time with the Thunderbirds was when she had Domino’s Pizza delivered to the Boston airport because they arrived so late after a long travel day with a plane full of hungry teenagers.
“The kids all remember the goals they scored and the games they won,” Carlo said. “I remember some of the messes they left. No, honestly, that was such a great group of kids to be their manager. They were so respectful. It made my job easy.”
While the Thunderbirds could count their losses from that season on one hand, the final one was the most difficult.
Their ultimate goal was to reach the national championship tournament, which was held in Pittsburgh that season. The Thunderbirds fell just short, and one of Olofsson’s current teammates with the Avalanche played a big role in the upset at the district tournament in Utah.
“That’s a blast from the past,” Avs defenseman Caleb Jones said. “Yeah, my Dallas team beat them. We didn’t have the talent they had. They were good.”
The Dallas Stars Elite U16 team did have Jones and Max Letunov, who was a second-round pick and currently plays in the KHL with Avs prospect Nikolai Kovalenko.
And they had a goalie play one of the games of his life.
“Man, we were so much better than those guys,” Ricci said. “It was 2-1. I think the shots were 52 or 55 to 12. Nowadays, we would have made it to nationals because they’ve added at-large bids. Back then, only the district winners went.
“But it happens, just like you see in the NCAA basketball tournament.”
While the postseason ended with a disappointing loss, that team etched a place in Colorado youth hockey history because of all the future pros wearing Thunderbirds sweaters.
It wasn’t just the five NHL guys, either. Several others played in the AHL, ECHL or had a full NCAA career. Morris was named the NCAA goalie of the year at Notre Dame, and recently played with Gustav Olofsson for the Coachella Valley Firebirds against the Colorado Eagles in Loveland.
None of them were a phenom at 15 years old, but Carlo was in the NHL at 19 and Terry became a high-profile prospect after starring for the Pioneers in college and for the U.S. team at the world junior championships. Olofsson and Eyssimont had winding paths, but they’re all NHL regulars now.
“It just shows there is hope,” Ricci said. “There is a path if you stick to it and you have the skill set. It’s not just the NHL, but to get to college or play junior hockey. It’s fun to see a local guy succeed. It just sends a good message that you can play in a nontraditional hockey market.”
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