That certainly did not apply to four-year-old Jonathan Morello. But his father’s career in landscape architecture took him all over the world. When his company, LANDinc, took a job in the United Arab Emirates, he brought his family from Canada for a short stint abroad.
As a child living in a country with very few ice rinks, Morello dabbled in other sports. There were wrestling classes and pools to swim in. But in his first sport, football, he had no problem ruffling a few feathers.
“We saw that he was very competitive,” said Morello’s father, Patrick. “He didn’t like the ball being taken away from him.”
These days, he doesn’t like having the puck taken away from him either. BU’s freshman center has approached everything the same his entire life: with incredible enthusiasm. That mentality has helped with a seamless transition to college hockey.
The Bruins’ fifth-round pick committed to BU last fall and established himself as a player at the bottom of the lineup among many teammates with much higher draft status. Currently third on the team with a plus-9 rating and tied for fourth in goals with six, his fifth-round pedigree hasn’t stopped him from performing for a program at the highest level.
“We have a lot of confidence in him, we know what we’re going to get from him every night,” BU head coach Jay Pandolfo said. “He also produces a little more than we might have thought.”
Long before he impressed his future head coach at BU, life returned to Toronto for Morello. The number of rinks went from one to wherever he looked. Although Morello was behind the eight ball when he started playing hockey, there was no denying his love for the game. From the age of six he skated as much as he could, even in sub-zero temperatures.
Eventually, he and his father built an ice skating rink in his own backyard.
“We used 100 percent of the site as an ice rink, and it was a small inner-city site. [The rink was] 18 feet wide and 30 feet deep,” Patrick said. “I wouldn’t do anything differently. It was so much fun.”
(Patrick Morello)
When Morello came in, he watched games on TV. He grew into a true fan of the sport itself, and his appreciation for the teams in the NHL spotlight was evident. From wearing Pittsburgh Penguins and Toronto Maple Leafs pajamas to his favorite players Jonathan Toews and Patrice Bergeron, he couldn’t get enough.
MORELLO entered organized hockey as an undersized player. Early on, his father made sure to give him the opportunity to be coached and instilled a no-apologies attitude in his son. Nearly every week for the next decade, hockey was the focus for Morello. Whether it was a workout or a workout, he approached it all the same way.
Morello loved to practice. He focused on the small details of his coaches, who taught him how to play the right way. Accountability was a quality that all his mentors boasted about.
“He’s one of those kids and one of those families that you really root for,” said Colin Murdoch, Morello’s former youth coach with the Vaughn Kings, a AAA club from Toronto. “He was a good teammate, he worked hard, his parents supported him.”
These days, it’s not common to find these traits in young players, even in a competitive, elite hockey culture like Toronto’s. While certain parents paid for their children’s ice time, Morello put his nose to the grindstone and worked for it. He even raised money by selling old poles and furniture online to buy new equipment for himself.
“He had an incredibly good work ethic. Even as a young kid, he was pretty disciplined,” said Dave Levtov, a skating coach at Power Skating Academy in Toronto. “But now it has even blossomed that he is not afraid to push himself.”
(Patrick Morello)
Levtov has been practicing at Morello for more than 10 years. He still works with him during the NCAA semester break. In addition to the focus on skating, he highlighted another aspect of Morello’s growth: his self-confidence.
“A lot of times players don’t want to fail, they don’t want to fall, they don’t want to look bad because someone is watching,” Levtov said. “He doesn’t care who’s watching. He wants to get better.”
Speed developed into one of Morello’s most important qualities, which emerged during his development. It became a skill that stood out when numbers didn’t appear on the stat sheet. In three junior seasons with the OJHL’s St. Michael’s Buzzers and the USHL’s Dubuque Fighting Saints, Morello was a point-per-game player just once. The Bruins still took a chance on him in the 2024 draft.
Anthony Stewart, a former NHLer, knows how difficult it is to make and stay in the NHL. He noticed Morello’s speed at first glance, but when he got to know Morello through recruitment for his Toronto Young Nationals club team, there was more than met the eye.
Unlike his teammates, who got rides from their parents after school, Morello took the subway, a 40-minute trip to Stewart’s gym outside the city, where he spent most of his afternoons training on and off the ice.
“People would actually see him walking across the bridge,” said Stewart of Morello after getting off the train. “About a 15 minute walk with his bag. Some parents stopped to pick him up, or one of us dropped him off afterwards.”
Morello loves the gym. To the point where one of his trainers, Matt Nichol, who has worked with NHL players for thirty years, would have to kick him out of his facility.
“He’s never not been early, he’s never not stayed late. He’s a kid who sticks around after practice and helps clean up,” Nichol said. “He’s a guy that, when we have interns in the gym, he goes out of his way to come by and introduce himself. Little things that don’t show up on a stat sheet and don’t show up in a scouting report, but they matter.”
In the 2022 OHL draft, Morello was one of three players offered a contract out of 54 players who attended the tryouts. At the time, taking that OHL contract meant Morello would lose his NCAA eligibility. Playing in a level two junior league was not common for those hoping to be picked in the NHL Draft.
“It was a big, big risk. Very rarely do you see guys get drafted into the NHL [before] the sixth or seventh round, who are from Ontario and don’t play major junior hockey,” Stewart said.
Twenty-eight players were drafted from the OJHL in the NHL Draft. Morello is one of fifteen players selected for the sixth round. After a second standout season at St. Michaels, in which he won the OJHL’s Top Prospect Awardthe Bruins selected him 154th overall in the fifth round.
Now at BU, Morello has developed into one of the Terriers’ most consistent forwards. Every player, in any situation, who is next to No. 10 on the roster has found solace in playing with him.
“Just having confidence in any situation is something that is essential. Whether it’s taking confrontations or… [playing on the] power play, punishment murder [or at] 5-on-5,” Morello said after filling in for injured teammates during a 4-3 win against Northeastern on Nov. 22. “It was good to be able to fill in for them and contribute in any way possible.”
After scoring at TD Garden in the Beanpot semifinals on Feb. 2, it was quite an experience for the freshman forward in what could be a future home stadium for him.
“I’m sure it’s exciting for him, knowing that he’s been drafted by the Boston Bruins and it must be special for him to play in that arena. I thought he handled it really well,” Pandolfo said, “It’s all the same what we’ve seen from him, just a pretty consistent game. I’m sure it felt pretty good to score a goal as well.”
His impactful freshman year of college was just another step in his development. He has already surprised some people with his performance, but others believe that Morello is trending towards a status that will surpass what everyone originally thought of him.
“He’s not going to look like a fifth-rounder when it’s all said and done,” Stewart said. “He’s going to be closer to a first or second look.”
And:
“He’s going to play in the NHL.”
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