Forward Anthony De Luca Off to Great Start in Stingers Rookie Season

Leads Ontario University Athletics in Goalscoring

SportsVince Morello — Published December 5, 2016

“My dad didn’t really want me to go skating,” De Luca said. But he persisted, asking his uncles, who also played hockey to take him outside to skate in his backyard.

“My two uncles took me out back, snuck me out. My dad found out and everyone came outside and I just got the hang of it right away,” he added.

Only two years later, at the age of four, he joined his first organized league.

For a while now he has been playing away from his hometown, Montreal. He played in Rimouski, for the Rimouski Oceanic—a team in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League—for three years. Then he played in Alaska, a 12-hour flight away, for the Alaska Aces in the East Coast Hockey League.

Being back in the city for the first time in awhile, De Luca has enjoyed playing in front of his family and friends.

“It’s been a while I haven’t been able to do that,” he said. “My parents are at every game and usually my cousins too, so it’s really nice.”

“We have a close family,” De Luca added.

In his first season with the Stingers, De Luca leads the team with 24 points in 16 games. He was what Stingers men’s hockey head coach Marc-André Element was looking to add to his roster over the summer.

“That’s why I was after him the whole summer,” Element said. “I knew he was a top end forward, a goal scorer.”

De Luca said he decided to come to Concordia because he had confidence in the coach and the program. It also didn’t hurt that a lot of his former teammates from the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, like Scott Oke and Dominic Beauchemin, were on the team.

He and current Stingers men’s hockey forward, Philippe Sanche, who committed to the Stingers just two days before De Luca, decided that they wanted to go to a winning yet unheralded program like Concordia’s.

Coming into training camp, De Luca had some adjustments to make. Playing in Alaska got him used to traveling and changing time zones often. But coming to USports, the shorter season taught him that he had to be ready for every single game.

“The goal is always to have a good start to the year,” De Luca said. “Unfortunately my two first games weren’t as planned.”

Despite the Stingers winning both those games, he was kept off the score sheet.

In the third game of the season, he started to show what he was going to be as a leader as well as a scorer for the team.

He got his first goal, although it seemed like it was in vain. The Stingers were losing 6-1 to McGill at the end of the second period.

This reminded De Luca of another game he had during his first year in the QMJHL.

The Rimouski Oceanic were down 5-1 to the Halifax Mooseheads team that included current Colorado Avalanche forward Nathan MacKinnon, current Tampa Bay Lightning forward Jonathan Drouin, and Montreal Canadiens draft pick Zachary Fucale. The Oceanic won the game in a shootout, 6-5.

“I’ve always been the guy to say, just believe, and you never know what happens,” De Luca said.

In the third period of the game versus McGill, the Stingers scored four goals in four minutes, but still fell short of the comeback. De Luca said this game really showed the amount of character on the team, and how the team would play throughout the season.

Since he joined the team, the Stingers have had one of their most successful seasons in their history. It sits in fifth place in the Ontario University Athletics East Division.

The whole team, De Luca said, worked hard over the summer in order to be so successful.

“We got our captain in [Olivier] Hinse. We got guys in net, Philippe Cadorette and Philippe Sanche that are doing a good job,” De Luca said. “It’s just fun to be surrounded by good guys like that and everyone works hard for everyone’s benefit.”

But his teammates and coaches have taken notice of what De Luca brings to the team. Element believes that De Luca has the ability to change a game all on his own and that he’s had an important role with his teammates as well.

“He’s not shy to say what he thinks to the other guys,” Element said.

Current captain Olivier Hinse, who is in his fifth and final year with the team, said that De Luca needs to understand his role on the team, both on the score sheet, and in the locker room.

De Luca said he tries to be a leader as much as possible, but that there are a lot of strong leaders on the team. Therefore in terms of being named as an assistant captain or captain, he said, “we’ll see where it goes.”