Anthony Deluca part of Wichita Thunder roster trending younger
Anthony Deluca is a 20-year-old Thunder rookie who may remind longtime Wichita hockey fans of somebody. A lot of somebodies, actually.
Deluca and some of his teammates are a throwback to Thunder teams of the mid- and late-1990s, when Wichita frequently employed younger players, many of whom were immediate stars.
Last season’s move from the Central Hockey League to the prospect-driven ECHL likely began a shift back to youth-heavy rosters. Returners Dalton Reum, Dan Milan and Danick Gauthier are all 23 as Wichita’s season begins Friday night in Tulsa.
“They’re the guys that come in, they’re hungry,” Thunder coach Kevin McClelland said. “They’ve still got that glimmer of hope that they’re going to get called up to the American League (AHL) and even beyond that. You hope that’s what they do .”
In all but two of its first seven seasons beginning in 1992-93, the Thunder suited up at least 14 players age 22 or younger. The peak came in 1997-98, the first season of a two-year affiliation with Kansas City of the now-defunct International Hockey League, when Wichita had 19 such players.
Those included eventual mainstays Travis Clayton in his first season and Jason Duda in his second, along with Dan Delisle and David Beauregard, who combined for 179 points.
Rosters also skewered younger then because the CHL implemented a rule in 1995 that limited veterans. The 1997-98 season included Wichita’s first teenager, 19-year-old Curtis Voth. Walker McDonald, who debuted the following season, is the only other.
“It would be the older players that drove us to the championships (in ’94 and ’95),” Thunder general manager Joel Lomurno said. “After the second championship, that’s when the league put in the veteran rule, and that’s when hockey became younger.”
It didn’t last long beyond those seasons, though. The only 22-and-under Thunder player to score more than 41 points since 1999 is Gauthier, who started last season at 22 and scored 68 points. In the final three seasons of the CHL, Wichita got a combined 44 games from players that age.
Deluca, a 5-foot-8 forward, may represent a permanent back. He scored 91 points as a teenager in junior hockey in Quebec last year and may add scoring punch to a Wichita team that had one player, Gauthier, among the league’s top 45 last season.
“My No. 1 asset is definitely my shot,” Deluca said. “Ever since I’m young, I’ve been working on it, whether it was in my basement or outside on the rink in the winter. It’s always been the thing that I’ve been working on the most. I’m known to be a shooter – I like to shoot the puck and I like to get a lot of shots on net.”
Deluca is an agile skater who doesn’t shy away from traffic, even though it almost always includes players greater in stature. He’s likely to start on the Thunder’s third line, which might not be a vast drop-off from the top two if Deluca and fellow rookie Mason Baptista can come close to their ceilings.
Deluca’s potential is attached to a learning curve that McClelland believes may not be too sharp. Deluca already possesses confidence, puck-handling ability, speed and physicality, but finding the right situations to combine those skills is an area for development.
“If there’s one thing he’s going to learn, probably starting Friday night, is that he can’t be as fancy as he was in juniors,” McClelland said. “He’s not going to get away with some of those things you did in juniors. He’s going to learn, in a real hurry, where he can take that and where he can’t.”
“Young energy,” Thunder captain Ian Lowe said. “Young legs. You’re happy when you come to the rink every day and the young kids have that young energy.”
This story was originally published October 15, 2015 at 3:55 PM with the headline "Anthony Deluca part of Wichita Thunder roster trending younger."