WORCESTER—It took this city a long time to acquire professional hockey but the game has been around town for 30 years now, long enough for its reach to extend past the city limits.
Who knows if this is a direct connection, a by-product of three decades of pro hockey or not, but 30 years after the birth of the Worcester IceCats one of the team’s founding fathers has a grandson playing in the National Hockey League.
But wait, there’s more.
Before that grandson reached the NHL he was coached by one of the leading players in Worcester Sharks history. Mere coincidence? It is possible, but not likely.
The saga centers around three people.
The grandson is Henry Thrun, a rookie defenseman with the San Jose Sharks. His grandfather is Sumner “Tony” Tilton, one of the investors in the group Roy Boe put together to bring the IceCats here in 1994. The coach is John McCarthy, who mentored Thrun with the San Jose Barracuda of the American Hockey League and is in the Top 5 in almost every offensive category in Worcester hockey history.
Tilton, 86, grew up on Salisbury Street and was a good athlete, captain of the basketball team at the Middlesex School. He was there after nearly flunking out of North High.
“Impossible, but I almost did it,” he said. He became an attorney, one of Worcester’s most prominent, and still practices with Fletcher Tilton out of the firm’s Cape Cod office in Centerville.
Thrun, 22, is the son of Tilton’s daughter Deborah and grew up in Southboro. He attended St. Mark’s and was a very good player at an early age. As a teenager Thrun moved to Michigan and played for U.S. National junior teams.
After that it was on to a great career at Harvard, then his NHL debut with the Sharks last March 30, in which he had a pair of assists. Thrun began this season with the AHL Barracuda then was an early promotion.
Tilton was not a hockey player and as far as he knows, nobody on his side of the family ever was. “I keep telling him,” Tilton said, “it’s a hidden gene.”
Thrun is 22, still an NHL rookie and currently on the injured list. He scored his first NHL goal on Jan. 9 and has the puck, along with a few other milestone pucks, in his apartment in San Jose. He is an important part of the Sharks’ rebuilding plan.
The IceCats moved to Peoria, Ill. in 2005 when Thrun was only four and has never played in the DCU Center. He is aware of his grandfather’s place in the city’s hockey history.
“Growing up,” he said, “I knew there was a connection there. I was too young to see any IceCats games, and I really didn’t put everything together until later, so we’ve only spoken about it.”
Thrun has, however, seen Worcester Sharks games and NCAA tournament games in the city. That means there is a good chance Thrun saw McCarthy in action as a Sharks winger.
McCarthy coached Thrun for 23 games at the start of this season before he was recalled to the NHL and liked what he saw.
“He’s very mature and honest,” McCarthy said. “His overall approach is his biggest upside but he is also very talented. He is one of their better defensemen up there.”
Thrun played three seasons at Harvard so it is not surprising he is good at the mental side of the game.
“Some times I’ll see something in the video after a game,” McCarthy said, “and want to talk to him about it, and he already knows what I want to talk about. He’s that kind of player.”
Tilton’s traveling is limited but he tracks Thrun’s career remotely.
“Who has a grandson playing in the NHL?” Tilton said. “I follow him closely. I haven’t seen him play for the Sharks but I saw him play at Harvard. We have great conversations. You look at him and he’s one of those defensemen who knows where the puck is gonna be, not where it was.
“He has those kinds of instincts. I’ve played sports all my life and you can tell an athlete. He’s one of those athletes.”
The IceCats remain a beloved Worcester hockey memory as shown by the large, loud and lively crowd put on by the Railers for IceCats Night on Jan. 13. Tilton was one of many city investors who helped back Roy Boe when he bought the Springfield Indians and moved them here for the 1994-95 season.
Tilton enjoyed it, mostly.
“I loved the experience,” he said, “but I did not like losing money.”
Boe owned several different teams including the New York Islanders and New Jersey Nets. An immensely likable man, he never had trouble finding partners and managed to maintain all his friendships through the ups and downs.
“He could charm the stripes off a zebra,” Tilton recalled.
The Thrun family has moved from Southboro to Marion but Southboro is where Henry Thrun fell in love with hockey. Every winter his dad, Dave, would maintain an outdoor rink.
“We had really great nights and weekends on the rink,” Henry Thrun remembered.
There are no backyard rinks in San Jose, but the grandson of one of Worcester’s hockey founders has taken the lessons he learned in Central Mass. to the National Hockey League.
Bill Ballou covered the Red Sox for the Worcester Telegram from 1997 through 2018. He has covered pro hockey in Worcester since 1994 and currently does a weekly column for the Worcester Red Sox. Ballou can be reached at vetgoalie@aol.com
