‘He Was a Quintessential Rink Rat’: Hockey Community Honors Nico Mallozzi

Though he’d spend four hours per day on the ice as part of his own age group during summer hockey camps, Nico Mallozzi had an uncanny knack for finding his way back out there, even if it wasn’t technically his time, according to the former hockey director at the facility where the New Canaan boy learned to skate. “He was a handful,” Marvin Minkler recalled with a smile at Darien Ice Rink on Saturday afternoon, as the New Canaan High School varsity team warmed up for its first home game since Nico, a 10-year-old who played with the CT RoughRiders youth hockey club, died unexpectedly on Jan. 14 following a brief illness. “He would find a way to make it out there with the Bantams,” Minkler recalled. “It was like, ‘How did Nico get out there?’ I would speak to Coach Tomasz Piatek.