WORCESTER—For pro hockey players, age is a Goldilocks thing.
More often than not they are either too young or too old. The porridge is just right for maybe four or five years. A player has to take advantage of that peak time.
Railers rookie forward Riley Piercey is working on arriving at that peak time. He is 21 and will turn 22 on March 20. Piercey is the fourth-youngest player on the Worcester roster including goalie Tristan Lennox, who is on injured reserve.
The ECHL is not a democracy, and that’s a good thing, because in it not all rookies are created equal. Piercey’s teammate Todd Goehring, for instance, is 26 and a rookie. Piercey arrived via the junior Ontario Hockey League, Goehring via Sacred Heart University.
The Railers should be a good fit for Piercey since coach Jordan Smotherman also went into pro hockey out of juniors. He was 20 when he made his pro debut with Chicago of the AHL in 2006-07.
“Maturity-wise,” Smotherman said, “turning pro at 20 as opposed to 24 or 25 is a lot different. I look back on my career and look at the advantage the college guys had at being older, more mature physically, and especially now when players come out of college at 24, 25 and even 26.
“The only advantage the junior player has over the college player is that they’re used to playing a pro schedule, 65 to 70 games.”
Piercey is from Orangeville, Ontario. However, there are no orange groves there. Or grapefruit, for that matter. The town is named after a man from Connecticut, Orange Lawrence — names were done differently in the 1700s, you must remember.
The Railers rookie had a good junior career in Barrie, Ontario then Flint, Mich. He had a fine season last year and the Bridgeport Islanders saw enough to sign him to one-year AHL contract. Piercey’s numbers in Flint were 22-48-70 in 67 games and he was plus-24.
He is built like the classic up-and-down winger at 6-foot-3, 194 pounds. To succeed, Piercey will have to play like that classic winger. That means using size to his advantage and in recent games, that has been happening.
Fighting is not part of the Railers’ overall game plan. Hitting is and that can lead to a fight. Piercey has had four fighting majors this season, all of them coming in the last 25 games. He was not a pugilist in junior hockey where players are allowed just three fighting majors before they are suspended.
“I’m not a set-in-stone specific fighter,” he said. “I’m more of just a two-way up and down the ice power forward. With my role, I play a physical game and I play hard. If the opportunity arises, fighting is part of the game but I don’t ever go looking for it. If it happens, it happens but I’m not too fond of it.
“You have to be angry. You have to have a reason. The last fighting major I had, the guy laid a hit on me and asked me if I wanted to go, and he wanted to go. It was as simple as that.”
Piercey’s offensive numbers were 4-8-12 through 41 games. He scored his first professional goal in his 14th professional game, a 4-2 victory over Adirondack at the DCU Center on Dec. 8.
“I think it’s taken him a while to adjust,” Smotherman said. “It can be a physical maturity thing. In juniors when you’re 19 or 20, you are the biggest and the strongest and you’re playing against guys who are 16, 17 and 18….you go from being the go-to guy in every situation to no longer being that guy.
“I definitely think he’s progressed.”
Piercey is hoping to show the Islanders enough this season to extend his one-year deal. He has a plan.
“I want to just be a sponge and learn from everything,” he said. “I know [Smotherman] has played a ton of hockey in a lot of different leagues and has a lot of advice to give…We talk a lot.”
The Railers’ regular season is 75 percent over. Players can make or break a career the way they handle a playoff run and the post-season, so the next few weeks will be big ones for Worcester’s big rookie winger.
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
