Local hockey player catches eye of Florida Panthers

A chance to prove himself to the Stanley Cup finalist Florida Panthers last week was everything 19-year-old Matteo Giampa thought it would be. 

The Niagara-on-the-Lake native spent July 8 through 15 at the Panthers’ IceDen facility in Coral Gables, Florida as one of 37 participants in the NHL team’s 2023 prospect camp.

Giampa closed out the 2022-223 hockey season on April 14 playing for the Bonnyville Pontiacs of the Alberta Junior Hockey League (AJHL). The second-year right winger led the Pontiacs with 27 goals and 65 assists in the regular season and added another 23 points in the playoffs, leading the team to the AJHL final, where they lost in five games to the Spruce Grove Saints.

Though the 6’1”, 180 pound forward watched this year’s NHL draft come and go without hearing his own name, he was overjoyed to get the invitation from the Panthers. 

“Right after the draft a couple of staff members called me and invited me down to the camp,” he tells The Local on a break from his summer job as a lifeguard at the Simcoe Park wading pool. “It happened really quickly after the draft. I was really excited to get that phone call.”

And the ball got rolling right away for Giampa. The very next day he received his itinerary, including his flight information for the trip to the Sunshine State. He was off to Coral Gables just another day later.  

Giampa was joined by hockey players from across the US and Canada, as well as others from Finland, Russia, Sweden, the Czech Republic and Austria. 

“I didn’t know anybody going into the camp,” Giampa says. “I ended up meeting a lot of really great people, and made some new friends. For the whole week, there wasn’t really even a second where we weren’t together doing something with the team, with the staff members.”

That included plenty of daily on-ice sessions and workouts, but the off-ice sessions were just as important for Giampa. 

“We had some analytics people come to talk to us,” he explains, “some of their food and nutrition staff too. We learned a lot about what it takes to be an NHL player. And a couple of the NHL guys came and did a Q & A with us.” 

That included former Niagara Ice Dog Carter Verhaeghe, 2014 number one draft pick Aaron Ekblad, Brandon Montour and Ryan Lomberg. 

“They popped in for a couple of hours for a workout, and then they stuck around for the session with us,” he remembers. “They shared their experiences on how they got to the NHL.”

Richmond Hill native Lomberg’s story resonated greatly with Giampa. The undrafted left winger caught the eye of Calgary Flames scouts while he was playing for the Youngstown Phantoms of the United States Hockey League (USHL). The Flames invited him to their development camp in 2015 and assigned him to their East Coast Hockey League (ECHL) affiliate in Adirondack. He moved up to their American Hockey League (AHL) farm team in Stockton, and in his second season with the Heat he was called up to the Flames.  

“It was good to see different players and learn about their different paths to the NHL,” he says. “It showed me that I need to keep pushing every day, keep grinding, and that If I do I can get to where I want to be.”

“Going to this development camp made me reailize that I’m definitely not that far away from my dreams,” adds Giampa. “Overall, it was a really good experience, it was definitely a good thing for my career.”

Giampa will be taking that experience and that attitude with him across the border to Buffalo’s Canisius College this fall. 

“I start there on August 23,” Giampa says. “We’ll start skating then. I’m going there with two other guys from the Pontiacs, and I’ve talked to a couple of guys who played for the Golden Griffins last year. The coaching staff is really great, too. I think this year will be a really great year.”