Nick Vitucci (born June 16, 1967) is a former professional

ice hockey Ice hockey (or simply hockey) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an ice skating rink with lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. In ice hockey, two opposing teams use ice hock ...

goaltender In ice hockey, the goaltender (commonly referred to as the goalie) is the player responsible for preventing the hockey puck from entering their team's net, thus preventing the opposing team from scoring. The goaltender mostly plays in or near t ...

. He was the head coach of the

ECHL The ECHL (formerly the East Coast Hockey League) is a mid-level professional ice hockey league based in Shrewsbury, New Jersey, with teams scattered across the United States and Canada. It is a tier below the American Hockey League (AHL). The E ...

Toledo Walleye The Toledo Walleye are a professional ice hockey team based in Toledo, Ohio. The Walleye are members of the Central Division of the Western Conference of the ECHL. The Walleye were founded in 1991 as the Toledo Storm and play their home games at ...

from 2009 to 2014. In 2008, Vitucci was inducted into the ECHL Hall of Fame.

Playing career

During his playing career, Vitucci spent most of his time in the ECHL, but had numerous call ups including stints in the IHL with the

Peoria Rivermen Peoria Rivermen is the name of four minor league hockey clubs: *Peoria Rivermen (IHL), named as such 1984–1996, formerly the Peoria Prancers 1982–1984 *Peoria Rivermen (ECHL), 1996–2005 *Peoria Rivermen (AHL), 2005–2013 *Peoria Rivermen (SP ...

and in the AHL with the

Maine Mariners Maine Mariners may refer to: * Maine Mariners (AHL), an ice hockey team in Portland, Maine, which operated from 1977 to 1992 * Maine Mariners (ECHL) The Maine Mariners are a professional ice hockey team in the ECHL that began play in the 2018 ...

Hershey Bears The Hershey Bears are a professional ice hockey team based in Hershey, Pennsylvania, a town located 14 miles east of the state capital of Harrisburg Harrisburg is the capital city of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the c ...

, and

Binghamton Rangers The Binghamton Rangers were an ice hockey team in the American Hockey League. They played in Binghamton, New York, USA at the Broome County Veterans Memorial Arena. History The market was previously served by: : Broome Dusters of the NAHL (1973� ...

. Vitucci also spent several summers in the RHI, with the

Buffalo Stampede The Buffalo Stampede was a basketball team in the Atlantic Coast Professional Basketball League (ACPBL) that started as a franchise in the Premier Basketball League (PBL) in the 2009 season. The team was originally the NexxNow Buffalo Dragons (c ...

Empire State Cobras The Empire State Cobras were a one-year franchise in Roller Hockey International during the summer of 1996, based out of Glens Falls, New York. The Cobras drew fewer than 1,000 per game at home and owner Jerry Shorthouse ran out of money before t ...

Buffalo Wings A Buffalo wing in American cuisine is an unbreaded chicken wing section ( flat or drumette) that is generally deep-fried and then coated or dipped in a sauce consisting of a vinegar-based cayenne pepper hot sauce and melted butter prior to serv ...

, and the

New Jersey Rockin' Rollers The New Jersey Rockin' Rollers were a professional roller hockey team based in East Rutherford, New Jersey, United States that played in Roller Hockey International. Club formation Roller hockey in the Garden State almost never happened, as the ...

. During his career in the ECHL, Vitucci won four Riley Cups in

1989 File:1989 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The Cypress Street Viaduct, Cypress structure collapses as a result of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, killing motorists below; The proposal document for the World Wide Web is submitted; The Exxo ...

1990 File:1990 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1990 FIFA World Cup is played in Italy; The Human Genome Project is launched; Voyager I takes the famous Pale Blue Dot image- speaking on the fragility of Humankind, humanity on Earth, Astroph ...

1994 File:1994 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1994 Winter Olympics are held in Lillehammer, Norway; The Kaiser Permanente building after the 1994 Northridge earthquake; A model of the MS Estonia, which Sinking of the MS Estonia, sank in ...

and

1996 File:1996 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: A Centennial Olympic Park bombing, bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, set off by a radical Anti-abortion violence, anti-abortionist; The center fuel tank explodes on TWA Flight 8 ...

and was named the Finals Most Valuable Player on two occasions (1989 and 1996), one of only two players in the league's history to do so, and Goaltender of the Year in

1998 1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The '' Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently ...

. Vitucci spent at least some time in all of his 13 years of professional hockey in the ECHL and when he retired in

2001 The September 11 attacks against the United States by Al-Qaeda, which Casualties of the September 11 attacks, killed 2,977 people and instigated the global war on terror, were a defining event of 2001. The United States led a Participants in ...

Vitucci left as the league's career record holder in games played, minutes played, wins, most 20 win seasons, most 30 win seasons, and most losses. Vitucci is the only goaltender in the history of professional hockey to be credited with a goal against a guarded net. In the 1996 season, while playing for the

Charlotte Checkers The Charlotte Checkers are a minor-league professional ice hockey team based in Charlotte, North Carolina. They are members of the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference in the American Hockey League (AHL), and are the top minor league affi ...

, Vitucci shot the puck up the ice toward opposing goaltender Alain Morissette of the

Louisville RiverFrogs The Louisville RiverFrogs were a professional ice hockey team competing in the East Coast Hockey League (ECHL), which was a mid-level professional American hockey league with teams from all over the United States as well as one franchise from Can ...

. Morissette stopped the puck outside the goal, but spun and shot it into his own net while attempting a pass. As the most recent Checkers player to touch the puck, Vitucci was awarded a point scored against an opposing goalie—a unique feat in hockey history for any goaltender. In

2008 File:2008 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Lehman Brothers went bankrupt following the Subprime mortgage crisis; Cyclone Nargis killed more than 138,000 in Myanmar; A scene from the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing; ...

, Vitucci was inducted into the ECHL Hall of Fame. Vitucci was joined by ECHL founder

Henry Brabham Henry Brabham IV (April 29, 1929 – March 30, 2020) was a founder of the ECHL, formerly known as the East Coast Hockey League. In 2008, he was inducted into the inaugural class of the ECHL Hall of Fame. The Brabham Cup, first awarded in 1989, is ...

, the league's first commissioner Patrick J. Kelly, and

defenceman Defence or defense (in American English) in ice hockey is a player position that is primarily responsible for preventing the opposing team from Goal (ice hockey), scoring. They are often referred to as defencemen, D, D-men or blueliners (the la ...

Chris Valicevic Chris Valicevic (born April 25, 1968) is an American former professional ice hockey defenseman of Croatian ancestry. who spent the majority of his career with the ECHL's Louisiana IceGators. He is the fifth all-time career scorer in the ECHL wi ...

as members of the Hall of Fame's inaugural class.

Career statistics

Coaching career

Vitucci began his career as a coach during the 1994–95 season when he took up assistant coaching duties while playing for the

Toledo Storm The Toledo Storm were a minor league professional ice hockey team in the ECHL from 1991 to 2007. The Storm played their home games at the venerable Toledo Sports Arena along the eastern banks of the Maumee River in Toledo, Ohio. The team colors ...

. Vitucci would have a second stint as a player/assistant coach during his final year as a player with the

Greenville Grrrowl The Greenville Grrrowl were an ECHL hockey team located in Greenville, South Carolina. They played their home games at the BI-LO Center. In the 2001–02 season, they won the Kelly Cup. The Grrrowl's initial season was 1998–99, with former Ch ...

. In

2002 File:2002 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 2002 Winter Olympics are held in Salt Lake City; Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and her daughter Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon die; East Timor gains East Timor independence, indepe ...

, Vitucci returned to Greenville to be their assistant coach and would leave to fill the assistant coach vacancy in Toledo after the season. Two months into the 2003–04 season, Toledo Storm head coach Steve Harrison was fired and Vitucci, who was his assistant at the time, was tabbed to be the interim head coach for the remainder of the season. At the end of the season, the Storm signed Vitucci to be their permanent replacement for Harrison and has remained the team's coach through the team suspending operations in

2007 File:2007 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Steve Jobs unveils Apple's first iPhone; TAM Airlines Flight 3054 overruns a runway and crashes into a gas station, killing almost 200 people; Former Pakistani Prime Minister of Pakistan, Pr ...

in order to construct the new arena. In February 2008 it was announced he would be retained as the head coach for the Walleye, which will be his fifth season in Toledo. The Storm saw success under Vitucci's tenure as the team made the playoffs in all three years with Vitucci, including a division title in

2006 File:2006 Events Collage V1.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2006 Winter Olympics open in Turin; Twitter is founded and launched by Jack Dorsey; The Nintendo Wii is released; Montenegro 2006 Montenegrin independence referendum, votes to declare ...

and reaching the American Conference Finals in the same year. Vitucci would go on to coach the team through the middle of 2014, where he then stepped down to focus on his role as the Director of Hockey Operations. In February 2016, Vitucci left the Walleye organization and returned to the bench as an assistant coach for the Portland Pirates. Since the start of the 2016/2017 season, Vitucci has been a professional scout for the

New Jersey Devils The New Jersey Devils are a professional sports, professional ice hockey team based in Newark, New Jersey. The Devils compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Metropolitan Division in the Eastern Conference (NHL), Eastern ...

Coaching statistics

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Vitucci, Nick 1967 births Living people Binghamton Rangers players Buffalo Stampede players Buffalo Wings (inline hockey) players Canadian ice hockey goaltenders Carolina Hurricanes scouts Carolina Thunderbirds players Charlotte Checkers (1993–2010) players ECHL coaches Empire State Cobras players Greensboro Monarchs players Greenville Grrrowl players Hampton Roads Admirals players Hershey Bears players Ice hockey people from Ontario Maine Mariners players New Jersey Rockin' Rollers players Peoria Rivermen (IHL) players Sportspeople from Welland Toledo Storm players Toledo Walleye Toronto Marlboros players Winston-Salem Thunderbirds players New Jersey Devils scouts Canadian ice hockey coaches