Many kids have always wanted to play a professional sport when they are younger. Most individuals who play sports growing up don’t get to make it to the professional level. Shane Pinto was one of the small percent of people to make it to the NHL and made his dreams come true.
If you don’t know who Shane Pinto is, he is a center for the Ottawa Senators and just finished his third year in the NHL. Pinto is from Franklin Square, Long Island, New York.
Pinto and I were from the same town and went to the same elementary school together and the same high school. Pinto was a dual sport athlete and was very good at both. Throughout his life he always played baseball and hockey.
During high school he wasn’t very committed to hockey because he loved baseball. He was on the varsity baseball team in his sophomore year of college and played travel ball over the summer since the age of 12 years old.
The Pinto family is a very athletic family. Pinto’s sister Brianna was also a freak athlete. Brianna was the captain of her high school track team and also was one of the top players on the softball team.
After her high school career at H. Frank Carey High School. She committed to the University of Fordham and played Division I Softball for four years.
Shane Pinto was 15 years old when he finally made the decision to make his full commitment to make it to the big leagues. It is very impressive that this was his dream and at the time he did not have any elite hockey programs scouting him at the time.
This is very late for a person to start to get recruited for college in hockey. The regular age to get scouted for college in hockey is in the 8th grade. The scouts are able to go to the games and watch but they are not able to make contact with the player till sophomore year of college. The reason why scouts can’t go to talk to them when they are being looked at since the eighth grade is because it prevents highly recruited prospects with no intentions of attending their school.
Players in hockey can get drafted as early as seventeen years old. For example, for the 2023 NHL draft the projected number on pick is a seventeen year old Connor Bedard. If you don’t know who Connor Bedard is, he is currently playing in the Canadian hockey league and is projected to be the number one overall pick in the 2023 NHL Draft.
Hockey analyzers have been saying for a year now that he is the next generational talent in hockey. This shows how late Pinto got into the process. Even though he was late into the process pinto still made it to a top school for hockey in college and was able to be drafted thirty second overall.
To achieve his dream Pinto made a list of ten things he had to do every day to get better at hockey. When he made this list Pinto taped to his wall in his bedroom so he would see it every day.
I got to talk with Pinto’s older sister Brianna and asked her about his hard work. Brianna said “Shane was always a hard worker and did what he can do to get better every day. But now seeing the sheet of paper on his wall today it gives me goosebumps. Seeing the list on the wall makes me remember the beginning of the process and how he is in the NHL today.”
Franklin Square is a small town with a three-square mile piece of land on Long Island with around 30,00 residents. When I went to go visit the Pintos house you can still see the dents all over the garage door from Pinto practicing.
Looking at the dents gave me chills knowing where his journey all started. The side work Pinto put in besides practices shows why he deserves to be in the NHL. On the list of “10 things to make it to the NHL” was to shoot one hundred pucks a day.
Another thing on the list that he prioritized was to practice his stick handling for at least an hour a day. Shane would practice his stick handling outside in the driveway and when get got bored he would do it in the living room. Pinto scraped the walls and the floors in the living room.
I was able to talk with Pinto’s mother Catherine and asked if there were any memorable moments when you were home when he was practicing. Catherine stated “whenever I was in the living room, I knew Shane was practicing if I heard bangs from the garage door or when I heard the stick going back and forth. I barely started to notice the noise because it was an everyday thing.”
When people say practice makes perfect this hose it really does. Like that Pinto did just spending at least one hour outside or inside to perfect everything got him in a top college and now he is in the NHL
Before he made it to the NHL, he went to North Dakota University. He finished his 2 years in college with 31 goals 29 assists with 60 points.
In Pintos freshman season for North Dakota University, he showed a significant difference for the team. Pinto led the team in goals and improved North Dakota’s power play. Pinto’s first goal he scored as a division one athlete was his first game in the season against Canisius with a 5-1 win.
Pinto has also led team USA in the IIHF World Junior Tournament with four goals and seven points. Pinto’s faceoff percentage was second in all time in a single campaign for North Dakota University. Whenever Pinto scored in a game, the North Dakota record was 12-1-1.
Before he went to North Dakota University Pinto was selected first pick in the second round in the 2019 NHL Entry Draft by the Ottawa Senators. Pinto was ranked 28th among North American skaters in the NHL Central Scouting’s.
Pinto was named to the USHL All-Rookie Team in 2018-2019 after leading all first-year skaters with 59 points in only 56 games. Pinto scored seventeen goals and added 15 assists in thirty games with Lincoln.
Pinto got moved to Tri-City where he put up eleven goals and added sixteen assists in 26 games. In the playoffs he had nine points in six playoff games with four goals.
The USHL stands for the United States Hockey League. This league is the top junior hockey league sanctioned by USA Hockey, the league has sixteen teams that are located in the midwestern part of the United States where played from sixteen to twenty one year old’s can play in. The USHL is amateur. This allows former players to compete at the NCAA college level.
Pinto represented the US in its gold medal entry at the 2018 World Junior A Challenge. He became the first ever North Dakota University player from the state of New York.
In Pintos Sophomore year he continued with his dominant fashion in division one hockey. He became the program’s nineteenth different player named as the Hobey Baker finalist.
The Hobey Baker trophy is given to the best men’s hockey player in the nation. It’s not only chosen for the player on the ice it is also off the ice. People who show integrity of the team, showing character on and off the ice, displaying their skills in all phases of the game and showing their scholastic achievements and sportsmanship.
Pinto appeared in 28 games in his sophomore season leading his team with fifteen goals and seventeen assists for 32 points of the season. Pinto also has won 388 of his faceoffs wins with a .619 winning percentage making it the second of all time in North Dakota University history.
Not only did he put up many goals and assists, he also had twelve multi point games for North Dakota. Out of the whole season of games he has only had nine games without a point.
Pinto was also awarded the All-NCHC first team award. If you don’t know what this award is it is the National Collegiate Hockey Conference award. You can also call it the player of the year award.
Pinto has become the first player to win the award in conference history. He also has become the first player in the eight years of the conference to win the award unanimously.
Pinto has also won the AHCA West first team All American. If you don’t know this award is for the top performers in their division.
As of right now he is having a very good season due to the fact his first ever season was cut short to a shoulder injury. He missed the whole season and had to get shoulder surgery.
In the 2021-2022 season Pinto was playing against the San Jose Sharks when he crashed into the boards and suffered a shoulder injury. Pinto only missed nine games recovering and was able to play again against the Pittsburgh Penguins. Going into his first shift he leaned in to win the face-off. He sadly re injured his shoulder and was out for the 2021-2022 season and had to get shoulder surgery.
In the short season he had he only was able to play 17 games in his first season in the NHL. With those 17 games he played in. He tallied one goal and had eight points.
Coming back for the 2022-2023 season Pinto was able to make it through the whole season. He had an exceptional comeback season because of the injury he had last season.
There were huge expectations for him coming back for this season and for him being hundred percent healthy.
During the season in October, he won the NHL rookie of the month. Pinto led all rookies with six goals in eight games. He was the first Senator to win Rookie of the month since Tim Stutzle in the 2021 season.
Shane Pinto averaged .75 goals a game in the month of October. Only one rookie since the 1993-1994 season has done that. The player that has done that was Elias Pettersson. Elias Pettersson was a Calder trophy winner who averaged .88 goals in the month of October.
Pinto is the first rookie in the Ottawa Senators franchise history for the longest scoring streak. Pinto currently holds the record with a five-goal streak. Pinto is on the third line and averages around fourteen minutes on the ice and was able to beat the franchise record.
This was the longest goal streak since NHL star Kirill Krapizov did it for the Minnesota Wild on April 17-24 in the 2021 season. Kaprizov’s streak went for six games in a row.
Pinto surpasses people such as Mark Stone, Daniel Alfredsson, and Alexei Yashin. Stone, Alfredsson and Yashin all scored with four consecutive goals in their rookie season. Yashin has actually had four consecutive goals in two separate occasions in the 1993-1994 NHL season.
Pinto throughout the season was one of the early favorites for the Calder Trophy. The Calder Trophy in the NHL is given to the NHL rookie of the year. Pinto led the NHL in rookies for face off wins with 399 and second in face off percentage with 51.1 percent.
At the end of the 2022-2023 season Pinto finished the season with 82 games played with 20 goals 15 assists with 35 points.