Nomads on ice
Players leave families, schools in hopes of being scouted
Second of two parts
Chris Tutalo is 17. He's living on his own. It's obvious.
Dirty clothes fill the closet in his apartment. Clean ones get stacked on a chair in the bedroom. Posters of booze and lingerie-clad women adorn his walls. Pieces of broken glass litter the carpet toward the back of the room. Small gobs of food mark the area around the sink. A phone, unused and unusable, rests on the kitchen table, a reminder of the bill, unpaid for five months.
With two years left before he gets his high school diploma, Tutalo migrated from Bedminster, N.J., to North Andover to play hockey with the Eastern Junior Hockey League's Valley Junior Warriors of Lawrence. It's his fourth stop in four years. He's on his third high school and might be somewhere else next September.
He's the changing face of high school hockey.
And that face can't keep a kitchen clean.
"We don't have a dishwasher, so we only use plastic and throw everything out," says Tutalo, who shares the apartment with a 19-year-old teammate. "When we do use plates, they usually just sit in the sink so long that they rust, and we just throw them out."
Tutalo clearly has invested much more in his quest for a college scholarship than in his dinnerware. With college coaches demanding older and more prepared players, high school students -- even in Massachusetts, one of the last bastions of the sport at that level -- are seeking more-competitive programs by moving away from home or by playing for a junior league or private school team not affiliated with their town.
"Part of me always says, 'I wish I could play with my own high school, with my home school,' " says Warriors forward Dan Rossman, 17, from Boxford, who is also on his third high school. "But it's just not something I can do if I want to play college hockey.
"No one's going to -- I don't want to come off as a jerk -- no one's going to find me."
As college coaches look over what they have wrought, they aren't sure about this new breed. They like the additional seasoning from juniors and preps. They don't like resumes cluttered with team names.
Better competition, better teammates, and better exposure drive the players. It takes over the lives of some, shuttling them from team to team and state to state. They all hope a Division 1 scholarship -- maybe even a professional paycheck -- awaits them at the end.
Why else would they leave everything behind?
Spectators shuffled in and out of a nearly full Arlington Sports Center in mid-December, grabbing bleacher spots and lining up along the glass. Arlington and Arlington Catholic, hockey rivals located less than a mile from each other, started warming up for their first meeting of the year.
It didn't even count. It was the preseason.
More than a month later, in the heart of their regular season, the Warriors hit the ice at the Valley Forum in Lawrence to play the New Jersey Hitmen.
Twenty-seven people sat in the arena.
"There's more," Rossman says, "than having fans in the stands."
Like scholarships. For these players, hockey is no longer about the here and now. It's about what's next.
And it doesn't come cheap.
Other than the Midwest's United States Hockey League, which is free for players and the best junior league in the country, high school hockey alternatives carry hefty price tags.
At the Eastern Junior Hockey League, costs start at around $3,500 per season. For many, that means after-practice jobs at the ice rink or parents paying in the hope they won't have to fork over a dime for college.
Rossman, a first-line forward, joined the nomadic high school hockey world as a freshman -- first at Pingree in South Hamilton, then Cushing Academy in Ashburnham, then the Warriors. He's now at Masconomet, the regional public school in Topsfield, attending his home school and rushing away every afternoon to make it in time for practice in Lawrence.
Five of the 23 Warriors players still attend high school. The rest usually take a couple of classes at a local community college.
"If hockey was not important to me, I'd be playing at
When the team was founded a decade ago, the Warriors planned to work developing players' skills during the postgraduate gap between senior year and collegiate hockey.
That's still the main focus, except as the EJHL improved its competition and earned recognition as the second-best junior league in the country, the Warriors likewise expanded their scope. Far more players hail from Michigan and Newfoundland and Illinois than from the team's backyard.
They travel hundreds of miles to play on this team so the pro scouts and college coaches who usually attend each game can see them. Not that it guarantees anything.
"I think one of the problems we have is a whole bunch of parents don't understand how this really works," Boston University coach Jack Parker says. "They think [if] they can send their kid to enough hockey schools, he'll be a New York Ranger or he'll get a college hockey scholarship.
"That's not how it works."
The door to Tutalo's apartment opened slightly and a face peeked in at Tutalo.
Just as quickly, Warriors coach Andy Heinze slammed it shut. "Sorry," he said.
Tutalo knew he'd get chewed out the next day. There had been a girl in his room and, well, he's not supposed to have girls in his room, at least not if he wants to actually get on the ice. And he's definitely not supposed to get caught by his coach.
"There really isn't much privacy here," Tutalo says.
It's been five months since he arrived at the apartment, adjacent to Heinze's house in North Andover, where he pays no rent because of his family's situation. Tutalo's still learning. He knows the rules, the penalties. That, of course, doesn't mean he always follows them.
He's not disciplined by a loss of allowance or a weeklong grounding, the way he would be at home. Now, the consequences are much greater.
After he missed curfew -- 9:30 p.m. on weekdays, unless he's studying -- early in his stay, he was relegated to the bench for the first five games of the season. Next time he gets caught with a girl, he's off the team, according to Heinze.
Not easy, especially for someone who left his life behind for hockey.
"I would say he definitely got the message pretty quick," Heinze says. "He knows that I have no problem with sitting him out."
Tutalo still scoffs at some of the restrictions, chafes under the curfew and no-girls rule, and seems astounded that his coach might check up on him.
"I guess we feel like we grow up faster, definitely," Tutalo says. "I don't really see kids in my school that are acting the same way I do. It's a lot different. It's kind of hard to relate to people my own age, actually."
It's his second year out of the house, after he took a year off from standard high school to play for a junior team about two hours from his New Jersey home. Put up in a basement apartment owned by a family affiliated with the team, Tutalo lived with four other players, whose ages ranged from 19 to 21. He was 16.
Tutalo didn't do much in the classroom last year. He took three classes -- he can only remember the subject of two of them -- and played hockey.
This middling focus on academics is not helping his prospects. Heinze has been contacted by one college expressing serious interest in the junior. It's not a bad option, 2003 Division 3 national champion Norwich University in Vermont, but he'll need a boost in his grades to be considered. And Division 3 doesn't give out scholarships.
Heinze labels Tutalo as one of the players who wouldn't be able to miss school for tournaments because of his academics. Tutalo says he has skipped about seven days so far this year at North Andover High School to play hockey.
"Bus trips are pretty rough because we usually get back late Sunday night and I have to get up Monday morning," Tutalo says. "It takes a toll. It's really hard to get anything done, actually. You definitely have to work at it a lot.
"I have to work extra with tutors in school to get work done before I leave. It's hard. I'm not going to say I get all the work done, but I get a majority of it done. Things I don't, I can let slide, as long as I don't let it go too much."
Parker, BU's coach, used to look across his home rink and see a high school squad brimming with talent.
It was easy. Brookline's hockey team practiced on the same ice as the Terriers in their old home at Walter Brown Arena. Parker often used to raid the program, skimming off the best and installing them on his side of Walter Brown.
No longer. College coaches have altered their recruiting to fit the new hockey landscape. In most cases, it's just not worth it to even look at high schools anymore. Parker hasn't seen Needham or Dedham or Walpole play this year. He doesn't make excuses.
That doesn't necessarily mean he's opening his arms to the migrants who permeate prep schools and junior programs.
"We're not looking for that well-traveled kid," says Parker, adding that he has "shied away from a couple situations like that."
In recent years, hockey players have adopted the idea that if they stay at their high schools, they won't be spotted. It's a theory grounded in reality, but it's not completely accurate.
Parker, after all, found Dan Spang at Winchester High School.
With scouting reports and Internet searches, good players seldom get lost in the shuffle, no matter where they play. And junior leagues are hardly a guarantee. College hockey scholarships are still a long shot, high school coaches point out, surmising that it's easier to earn an acceptance to medical school than to snag money to play college hockey.
Parker says succeeding in hockey -- whether that results in a scholarship or not -- is about getting enough ice time and instruction. It's about finding good coaching. It's about having fun playing hockey.
It's not about the number of sweaters you've worn.
"I was able to play with my friends," says Boston College's Pat Gannon, who graduated from Arlington before spending a year with the Boston Junior Bruins. "I was able to play at a competitive level. . . . I guess they're not as loyal to their town as I was. If you work hard enough, you can get just as far. It all comes with hard work."
Gannon attracted attention while with the Spy Ponders. Advised by the coaching staff at BC to spend a year on a junior team, Gannon did just that. Now he's suiting up for the team ranked No. 1 in the country.
Junior coaches argue that option is fading. Fewer kids are left at the high school level to get spotted. Most have already been scooped up.
"Junior hockey is now an option for a real serious player that wants to get to the collegiate level," says Bill Flanagan, a former high school and prep coach who now leads the Northern Mass Cyclones. "It's just the way it is. . . . The bottom line is we're doing it -- and I'm personally doing it -- because I realize this is what the players need to be doing."
It's a tug of war. A "he said-he said" battle between coaches, each of whom has his own agenda.
Parker remains stuck in the middle.
"You can be a good hockey player anywhere," Parker says. "One of the myths is if you don't leave your high school team and go play for a junior team or go play for a better prep team, then you won't develop. Good players can develop as long as they're practicing and playing.
"And sometimes it's not a bad thing to be a big fish in a little pond."
MTV switches on. Not many options on the cable package in Tutalo's apartment that, he says, has about as many Spanish channels as English ones. Three teenagers pile onto the futon in Mitch Mikolajewski's makeshift bedroom. He arrived from Michigan three days after Tutalo. Tutalo got the room with the door.
None of them, Tutalo, Mikolajewski, and teammate Will Schaetzl, knew each other when they arrived. Raised in three different states -- New Jersey, Michigan, and Massachusetts -- they grew into a support system, replacing family members and childhood friends.
It's easier that way. They understand.
"You hang out a lot more with the people on your hockey team because they're more like you than the people from your school," Tutalo says. "Everybody around here knows what it's like to live on their own and cook food for themselves and stuff like that. Nobody's too spoiled about anything.
"When you go to high school, you meet kids that have never been out of the house for more than a couple weeks. They don't really know how to do things for themselves. So it's a lot different. They still have mom and dad doing laundry for them. It'd be a nice thing to have again."
While wistful about home-cooked meals and freshly laundered clothes, Tutalo doesn't want to go back. He plays a caliber of hockey in Lawrence that he couldn't get at home.
He's happy.
Whether he's healthy is up for debate.
"The danger is there can be a disruption in an adolescent's life where the main task of adolescence is to become independent from his parents and develop a sense of identity," says Dr. Richard Ginsburg, clinical psychologist and codirector of a sports psychology program at Massachusetts General Hospital. "They may not be ready to be on their own just yet. When they're thrown into a variety of new environments with coaches they don't know well and kids they don't know well, they're susceptible to feeling alienated, depressed, maybe not making the best decisions for themselves.
"Kids aren't free agents. They're not commodities. They can't be traded around."
High school coaches worry about these kids. College coaches worry. Sports psychologists worry.
Parents worry.
Tutalo's mother, Michelle, says letting him leave home at age 16 hurt. She cried. But, she says, her son won't let her stand in the way of his dream.
Tutalo's not sure what's next. Could be another high school. Could be another junior program. He doesn't even know what state he'll be in.
"I'm happy with the path I've taken," Tutalo says. "It's better than going through life not sure what you're doing. I'm happy with the way I went, no matter what the outcome."
Amalie Benjamin can be reached at abenjamin@globe.com.
