Devon Prep ice hockey team making presence felt in inaugural year in ICSHL

Devon Prep is making its presence felt in its initial season in the Inter-County Scholastic Hockey League, with a 7-5 record in the PCL Division. That includes a 6-5 win on Friday against Father Judge, the No. 5 ranked team in the recent AAA Flyers Cup standings.
That’s quite an accomplishment for a team that didn’t even exist 18 months ago, then struggled through a nonleague schedule in its inaugural year of existence with nine skaters and two goalies.
“Before the 2022-23 school year, if you played ice hockey for Devon Prep, you wore a Bishop Shanahan uniform because Devon never had enough players to field their own team,” said coach Matt Fabrizio.
According to Fabrizio, the idea for a hockey team first started at a 2021 dinner at Teca in Newtown Square. At the table sat Fabrizio, Athletic Director Jason Fisher, Director of External Operations Pat Kane and Ray Mirra, the owner of PNY Arena in West Chester.
“Jason was in search of adding a ‘spectator friendly’ sport to Devon Prep,” said Fabrizio. “He had witnessed the incredible passion, noise level, and excitement of ‘The Pit,’ Devon Prep’s student section, as the head coach of our state championship basketball team that year and he knew adding hockey to Devon would be a winner.”

Kane and Mirra, whose hockey-playing son had just graduated from Devon, shared Fisher’s excitement.
“Ray told us he always wanted big-time prep hockey played out of his arena,” said Fabrizio. “My life was never the same after that dinner. Pat, Ray and Jason were instrumental in navigating the waters of getting a program off the ground. Pat was even into scouting players at local rinks with me as we started to accumulate enough players for an actual team.”
Fabrizio definitely faced a tough challenge in filling out the roster.
“Fielding a full team of 18 skaters and two goalies is tough anywhere, let alone at a small high school where each class has 60-65 boys,” said Fabrizio. “Throw in the fact that Devon Prep is a tough, academically-challenging school, and you have a perfect recipe for a short bench. We already had four kids — James Gabriele, Brendan Bachman, Sean Massey and Cristiano Romeo — at the high school that played ice hockey, so we started there. A couple of brave souls decided to give hockey a try for the first time, then we secured two stud goalies in Grant Gale and Aidan Wright. We got lucky when Frankie Hartman, Luc Gochtovtt and Jesse Xiong enrolled at Devon Prep early last year, and then we were off to the races.”
Last year, Fabrizio and Kane scoured the local rinks for prospective players and added seven Tier 1 players for the 2023-24 school year. In June, Fabrizio signed the team up for the Skatium Summer High School Hockey League, and the squad captured the championship.
This winter, the Frozen Tide is an entertaining squad, featuring a prolific offense and plenty of high-scoring games. As of Friday, the team has scored 80 goals in 12 games and given up 56. Leading the way is junior forward Kieran Crossan, who scored seven consecutive hat tricks and currently leads the ICSHL in scoring.
“We are certainly chock full of scorers,” said Fabrizio. “Kieran Crossan and Braydon Russo get most of the attention because they are so incredibly talented, but we complement the boys with an arsenal of scorers for support. Danny Dowling, James Gabriele, Logan Reaney and Frankie Hartman all have rocket shots. Tristan Apalucci and Jesse Xiong can both finish too.
“Our coaching staff likes the idea of an attacking offense, and a north-south, aggressively styled team is always popular with teenagers, so we got some pretty quick buy-in. It is immensely helpful to have two superstar goalies and a strong set of defensemen like Josh Vaughn and Brendan Bachman when you are attacking.”
Vaughn, a freshman and assistant captain, said, “Due to grade and eligibility logistics, I wasn’t able to join the Tide until this season, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing though because I was able to watch a high level of hockey and was able to grow as a player just by practicing with them, and they treated me like I was one of them. The new talent we brought in this year has been able to fuse with our old team like they’ve played with us for years. Everyone on this team works as a unit, where if one thing goes wrong we pick that guy up and work around it. There have been games that we’ve won that we had no business winning just because of that togetherness, the best example being our 7-3 win against Owen J Roberts, a well-established program known for its physicality and quick style of play — we stayed together and we poured it on late.”
Gabriele, the team captain, said, “We started out slow this season, but I’ve felt our team starting to become true brothers in the recent weeks. The jump from last year to this one is amazing.”
Russo said, “Our team treats everyone (on the squad) like they’re all brothers. That for me has been the biggest part of success. Our bonds off the ice are special.”
Dowling lauded the support of the students.
“Joining a new program that is rapidly improving has been a blast,” said Dowling. “Against Spring-Ford we were down by a goal in a hard, physical game and we scored with under two minutes left to send it into overtime. It was amazing to see our team battle back and not give up, and a big part of that is the energy the student section gives us. With our class mates in the stands we are motivated to perform our best.”
Fabrizio paid tribute to Fisher’s influence on the team, both as an athletic director and basketball coach.
“Jason has been our No. 1 supporter from the moment our team was conceived,” said Fabrizio. “Quite simply, no Jason, no Frozen Tide. He has helped support our program’s aggressive launch in a myriad of ways. He has an exemplary basketball program that we look to emulate in as many ways as possible. In fact, last year, our team did team yoga with Jason’s team. I just wanted my players to be around his basketball players so they began to understand important team concepts that Jason’s teams always exhibit.
“Jason has offered us guidance on team culture, juggling bus schedules, and on how to handle players and parents, just to name a few. He also is an expert on the PIAA and has built up many strong connections in and around the sport over his years as an AD.”