Angling for the NHL: Blue Jackets' Angle determined to show he's no fluke
Size concerns dropped the versatile forward to the seventh round in 2019, but a breakout performance in the AHL showed there might be a bright future for him in Columbus.
Brian Hedger
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. – After spending more than three decades training racehorses, Ralph Biamonte knows a long shot when he sees one.
Biamonte, 80, is a Canadian-born thoroughbred trainer from Niagara Falls, Ontario. According to equibase.com, he has collected 1,168 victories, 956 second-place finishes and 760 thirds among the 6,262 horses that have raced under his training in a career that's netted more than $23 million.
Biamonte, a hockey player in his youth, still loves that sport and now has a grandson — 20-year old forward Tyler Angle — who has climbed within one level of the NHL for the Blue Jackets despite being selected 212th out of 217 players taken in the 2019 NHL draft.
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He’s the long shot, and there’s a tattoo inscribed on his right forearm to prove it.
“This says, ‘Height doesn’t measure heart,’ ” said Angle, tracing his index finger along the words of a marking he got after the Jackets selected him with their last of three picks that year. “That’s one thing I always keep in the back of my mind. There’s other guys bigger than you out there, but ... you can have a bigger heart and work harder than them.”
It’s a creed that comes from Angle’s father, Todd, a financial advisor in Ontario who has hammered it into his son's mindset as the young forward has climbed through the sport's ranks. It’s also something Biamonte, his grandfather, made clear after Angle's name was called at Rogers Arena in Vancouver with just five picks left in the 2019 draft.
“A seventh-round pick ... and then I signed (an NHL) contract two years later,” said Angle, who impressed with the Cleveland Monsters last season as a rookie in the American Hockey League. “Not a lot of guys can say they did that, and there’s a lot of people, a lot of family too — even my grandparents — that kind of motivate you too, just in ways of saying, like, ‘Well, you’ve really got to work for what you want to do.’ ”
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Long shots are reminded of that often. The ones who make it never forget it.
“That’s what my family was telling me, and there’s always those people that say, you know, ‘A seventh-round pick, you’re just a lucky pick in the draft … they were just picking you because they needed somebody to pick,’” Angle said. “But for me, that’s all motivation. That’s what drives me.”
Sharp Angle
Angle had a breakout season in 2019-20 for the Windsor Spitfires, excelling in his fourth year of junior hockey in the Ontario Hockey League.
After being drafted by Columbus, he became a "point-a-game" player for the Spitfires while proving himself capable of playing center or wing. Angle finished the season with 29 goals, 38 assists and 67 points in 62 games, but the North American start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 erased the OHL's postseason. It also erased the league's entire 2020-21 season, which was supposed to be Angle’s final spin as an “over-ager” looking to dominate that level.
As it turned out, the pandemic worked in his favor.
Angle joined the Monsters with an amateur tryout contract and worked his way into a key role during his first taste of professional hockey. After sitting out as a healthy scratch for a handful of games, he capitalized on his first opportunity to play.
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A teammate’s COVID-19 diagnosis created the opening he needed in the lineup and Angle scored a goal in his first AHL game. He added a goal and assist in his second game and quickly became a lineup regular. Angle finished with another “point-a-game" season, posting an impressive scoring line of 11-13-24 in 23 games, and he earned a three-year NHL entry-level contract.
Angle is now out to prove it wasn't a fluke.
“That year couldn’t have (gone) any better for myself,” he said, prior to skating for the Blue Jackets this week at the 2021 Traverse City NHL Prospects Tournament. “My focus this year is, ‘Don’t let it be a flunk year,’ right? You could say (last season) was luck all you want, with a COVID year like that and the shortened season, but I’m going to go into (this) year to prove to other people that it wasn’t just luck. I’m going to go in there and try to do the same thing I did last year.”
Promising prospect
Angle doesn’t look like a seventh-round pick.
For starters, he’s not small by NHL standards at 5 feet 10 and is eager to gain strength and bulk in the weight room. Size was most commonly cited as the reason he slipped so far in the draft, and that's less of a concern now.
The NHL has become a league built on speed and skill, not just size and strength, and that has allowed a number of smallish stars to emerge. Angle, for example, stands about the same height as Chicago Blackhawks superstar Patrick Kane and towers over Kane's 5-6 teammate Alex DeBrincat, who's a dynamic offensive force. Angle is also taller than former Blue Jackets star Cam Atkinson and has grown about an inch since the Jackets drafted him.
In his mind, though, he’ll never stop hearing his dad's advice.
“I used to hear it all the time from the OHL scouts: ‘This guy’s too small,’ ” Angle said. “I was a lot smaller in junior hockey and that used to bother me a lot. That’s when my dad and I used to have sit-down talks. The one thing he used to always say to me was, ‘No matter what people tell you about your size and your skills, if you’re the hardest worker out there, somebody’s going to notice you.’ That’s what got me to where I am today.”
It needs to stay that way, too.
“The way he played in junior is the way he has to play all the time,” said Chris Clark, the Blue Jackets’ director of player personnel and general manager of the Monsters. “He was getting points in junior, but it all came from his work ethic. Some guys, when things come to them because they worked, they think, ‘Well, I don’t have to work anymore because I’m going to score goals and get assists, and things are going to come a little easier.’ Other guys know it’s going to come from work first, and I think he did that (in Cleveland) last year.”
Angle also has impressive skills. His wrist shot is hard and accurate. His passes are crisp. His skating allows him to keep pace, he sees the ice well and around the net he's a puck hound.
The term "long shot" still applies, simply because of where he was drafted, but Angle could become a top prospect if his work ethic continues to pay off. His grandfather should know that term too.
A thoroughbred named “Top Prospect" was one of his most successful horses.
bhedger@dispatch.com
@BrianHedger