FRANKLIN SQUARE, N.Y. — Even though Shane Pinto hasn’t lived in his parents’ home on a full-time basis in seven years, his childhood bedroom remains frozen in time.
A New York Jets comforter still covers the bed.
Dozens of trophies and medals from youth tournaments line his shelves.
And the walls are adorned with pieces of paper with Pinto’s handwriting that give a glimpse into the determination and drive behind the athlete.
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When he was 15 years old Pinto decided to set a goal of making it to the NHL, which was rather ambitious considering he wasn’t on the radar of any elite hockey programs at the time. To achieve this dream, he wrote down a list of 10 things he needed to do on a daily basis. He took masking tape and secured the sheet of paper on his bedroom wall so he would see it every day.
But at least one member of his household was somewhat skeptical.
“I used to mess with him and tell him, ‘Yeah Shane, you’ve got no shot. What are you talking about?'” says his older sister, Brianna. “But now, seeing that piece of paper, every time I go into his room it gives me chills. I’ll even bring my friends by the house and when they walk into his room they think it’s crazy too.”
Shane Pinto admits to being a little bit sheepish about his childhood dream still being on open display.
“It’s not that I’m embarrassed by it, but it’s your own thing and you don’t necessarily want people seeing it,” he says. “But if you look back at it now, it is pretty cool when you see all the things I wrote down and how everything has come true so far.”
Frank and Catherine Pinto affectionately refer to their house as “our teeny little cottage.”
It’s a modest home in Franklin Square, a community of roughly 30,000 residents that sits on a three square mile piece of land on Long Island. And while the inside of the home has several reminders of Shane’s ascension to the NHL, the exterior of the house bears some unique souvenirs as well.
But instead of bemoaning the fact that their siding and garage door is littered with dents from errant pucks, Frank and Catherine are more eager to show off their youngest child’s artwork. They point to each dent with an equal sense of pride and humour.
“I guess it shows how much he really wanted it,” says Frank, pointing out the massive dents that surround the frame of the garage door. The largest dent is along the side of the house and looks as though someone took a sledgehammer to the siding.
“It’s funny,” adds Catherine. “I actually think it’s hilarious.”
The third item on Shane’s list of “10 things to make it to the NHL” was a vow to shoot 100 pucks per day. So the summer he turned 15, he started a daily routine in which he would stand in the family’s driveway and work on his shooting technique.
“In the beginning, I was horrible. And I was shooting with my headphones in, so I actually didn’t know if it hit the siding or not,” Shane says. “Eventually, when you keep doing that, it just adds up. It was a bit of a mess.”
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Also on the teenager’s priority list was a promise to practice stickhandling for at least an hour per day. But Shane often accomplished that task inside the living room, dragging a golf ball along the hardwood floor. The resulting noise would always upset Brianna.
“She would always say, ‘Can you go somewhere else? It’s so annoying,'” says Shane. “She was trying to do homework and I was just stickhandling with a golf ball for an hour.”
“He would stickhandle in there until midnight,” adds Catherine. “And ‘click, click, click’ is all you would hear inside the house.”
In the course of working on his stickhandling, Shane scraped the walls and floors inside the living room.
“I ruined that house for a good three years,” laughs Shane. “I owe them a nice home renovation. If they ever sell, I will renovate for them.”
But Catherine says they have no intention of selling their house, unless they can pick it up and move it to a new location. There are simply too many fond memories attached to each dent and scrape left by their son.
“I guess that’s why I haven’t got it fixed,” admits Catherine. “I think when we fix it, it really means he’s gone. Even the dents.”
The distinction of who is the best athlete inside the Pinto household is actually up for debate. Even though Shane plays in the NHL, Brianna was a dominant force in her own right growing up.
She was captain of the H. Frank Carey high school track team and a softball star who would go on to a brilliant collegiate career at Fordham University. Brianna is the program’s all-time leader in stolen bases with 85, including going a perfect 25 for 25 in stolen base attempts in her final season in 2022.
“She was the better athlete growing up. She was a freak athlete and she was always better than me at everything,” says Shane. “So we went at it a lot. I think that’s where I get my competitiveness from.”
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Frank recalls having to break up some physical fights that he described as “real doozies” when things boiled over between the siblings.
“It was bad growing up. We were so competitive that we always wanted to one-up each other,” says Brianna. “We had a competitive mindset at a young age. And I think it made us better at our own sports.”
The two Pinto siblings would often engage in a heated whiffle ball game. The object of the game was simple: Hit a whiffle ball as far as possible. A ball hit a certain distance would equate to a single. One hit further was a double and so on, culminating with a home run.
Given her penchant for success on the softball diamond, Brianna often beat her brother at the game.
“She would always beat me and I would end up crying,” says Shane. “But if it wasn’t for those games and going to battle with her, I wouldn’t be as competitive as I am. And yeah, she was naturally gifted.”
Those moments of family tension still arise to this day. When the four of them get together for the holidays, a spirited game of rummy will often break out and the competitive juices start flowing.
“We all go at it,” says Shane. “I just hate losing. But that’s what you cherish the most. Just spending time playing cards with the family.”
Those family visits are more difficult to arrange, but they are savoured when the stars align. When Shane flew to Long Island with the Senators last week, Catherine drove to the team hotel at 2:30 a.m. to pick him up and bring him back home.
“He could have stayed at his fancy team hotel, but he wanted to come home because he loves it here,” says Catherine.
Brianna even made the trek from Manhattan — where she now lives because of her full-time job — giving Frank and Catherine the unique Valentine’s Day gift of having both their children at home. They ate breakfast together last Tuesday morning, with Catherine making scrambled eggs with spinach for her brood.
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Brianna says she savoured the opportunity to come back home herself to watch her brother play a home game at the UBS Arena, which is just three miles from their childhood home.
“It’s so cool that someone from Franklin Square made it, you know?” says Brianna. “I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.”
And Brianna likes to take credit for introducing Shane to more than just a fiery competitive spirit.
“You know it’s funny. I started to try figure skating and then all of a sudden, Shane says he wants to try skating,” says Brianna. “So yeah, I think I deserve some credit there too.”
The first time Frank Pinto watched Shane take a skating lesson, he certainly did not think an NHL future was in the cards for his son.
“At his first ice skating event, he was constantly falling,” says Frank. “And he was going down hard.”
A fellow parent suggested he should purchase some equipment to cushion those falls during the skating lessons. So Frank hit a second-hand sporting goods store and purchased shoulder pads, elbow pads and hockey pants for Shane.
But still, his seven-year-old son would grumble after most sessions on the ice.
“He would always be complaining to us. ‘My back hurts, my back hurts,’ says Frank.
It wasn’t until Shane was recruited by Domenic Settimo of the Long Beach Eagles to play on a competitive team as a nine-year-old that things started to take shape on the ice. Settimo admits “we had a very small team” and he was simply looking for players to fill out a roster.
“Shane started late. And when he started with us, he was a rough skater. His edges were really rough,” recalls Settimo. “But I always knew his work ethic would make him succeed. The kid just never stopped working. And he outworked every kid in his age group.”
Shane’s story is atypical in the hockey world. The backstory on most NHL players is they started skating shortly after learning how to walk. They focused solely on hockey growing up, rarely having time to indulge in other sports. Shane, on the other hand, was a supreme athlete who excelled at baseball and football in addition to hockey.
“So many kids play hockey from four years old until 15 and then they stop loving it because they overdid it. They played it so much,” says Shane. “They didn’t play other sports and they didn’t realize what other things they can do. I was lucky to play other sports. I think it was a good thing.”
The play that nudged Shane Pinto down a path towards the NHL actually happened on a football field.
When he was 14 years old, Shane had designs on potentially being the starting quarterback for his high school team. The varsity football coach had even mentioned that he was a strong candidate for the role down the road.
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But things changed during a scrimmage. Shane took a snap and ran a draw play up the middle of the field. He landed awkwardly and broke his collarbone.
Catherine received a phone call at home that Shane had been injured and she rushed to meet the ambulance.
“I got there and Shane looked awful. He was like grey,” recalls Catherine.
To this day, Catherine admits to being a “nervous Nellie” at the prospect of her son being injured while playing a sport. She couldn’t bear to watch the first few games of this season because she was wary of his return from a shoulder injury he sustained in the fall of 2021. Catherine now keeps a prayer medal with her when watching Shane play on television, believing firmly in its powers to protect her son from afar.
“I remember being so dejected inside that ambulance,” says Shane. “And I definitely remember my mom saying, ‘You’re not playing football anymore.'”
The collarbone injury put Shane on the sideline and radically altered the trajectory of his life.
“Everything stopped for me at that point. I couldn’t play baseball or football with the injury,” says Shane. “And so that’s when I sort of decided to focus on hockey. And it kind of got me to where I am today.”
With football off the table at his mom’s behest, Shane was left with a choice between baseball and hockey. He was a solid baseball prospect, playing a variety of positions from catcher to shortstop to centre field. Frank admits he was certainly trying to nudge his son towards a career on the diamond, so when he chose to pursue a hockey career, he felt a little betrayed.
“I will admit, that hurt. I am a baseball guy. And I didn’t grow up around hockey, so I didn’t know the intricacies of the game,” says Frank. “But you know what? I think that was the best thing for him in hindsight. Because the only thing I could get on him for was hustling. That’s it. I didn’t know the game.”
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“Him and my grandpa wanted me to play baseball. My grandpa hated hockey. He would take me to the rink in the summer and he would say, ‘Why do we have to do this? Why are we in the cold during the summer?’ says Shane. “Now my grandpa loves hockey, but I know they wanted me to play baseball.”
Shane doesn’t know if he would have reached the same heights of professional success if he chose the baseball path.
“Baseball is just so tough to make it,” says Pinto. “I mean, you’ve got to go through an entire farm system of (Class A), Double A and Triple A. I just think it’s tougher.”
Shane truly fell in love with hockey right around the time Sidney Crosby was leading the Pittsburgh Penguins to consecutive Stanley Cup titles in 2016 and 2017. Crosby became his idol and role model and he quickly adopted the Penguins superstar’s passion for the game. And when Shane decided to focus solely on hockey, he believed that writing down his goals was the best way to visualize his path.
“That was the summer of my 15th year and I was like, ‘This is all I’m going to do the whole summer. I wrote those 10 things down and I did it every day,” says Shane.
The list is littered with the type of mistakes you might expect to see from a teenager.
Items No. 7 and No. 9 are crossed out completely.
He originally wrote “Be a better person” for item No. 10, but later scratched out the word “better” and replaced it with “good.”
But the main focus is tucked into the bottom righthand corner of the page. There is a simple equation for Pinto to follow:
“Eat healthy + Train Right + Be Positive.”
And beneath that he scrawled, “NHL and same line as Sid the Kid”
As Shane elevated his game on the ice, he needed to surround himself with better competition. And so the family made the difficult decision — emotionally and financially — to send him off to South Kent prep school in Connecticut.
By their own admission, the Pintos are the epitome of the middle-class, working family in America.
Both Frank and Catherine work full-time jobs and don’t have an endless amounts of disposable income.
“We are middle class,” says Catherine. “Just paying our bills and working hard.”
So the decision to send Shane off to an elite prep school in Connecticut was not an easy one. South Kent is an all-boys prep school founded in 1923 that comes with a tuition rate you might expect to see from a major university. (Their website lists the tuition with boarding at $62,900 for the 2023-24 academic year.) The Pintos were fortunate that Brianna received a full scholarship to play softball at Fordham University, but they simply did not have the available funds to pay for Shane’s time at South Kent, even with some financial relief.
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They refinanced things to take out a significant loan to allow Shane to attend South Kent.
And there were no guarantees this was going to lead to a successful or lucrative hockey career for their son.
“Going into South Kent, I was actually their extra forward,” says Shane. “At that point, I was just trying to get on someone’s college radar.”
But the Pintos did not hesitate to send him off.
“As parents, we always just wanted to give our kids every opportunity possible,” says Frank.
“To be honest, I think it was tougher emotionally than financially to see him leave home at 15,” says Catherine. “And we always just looked at this like we were making an investment in our son. And that we believed in him.”
To this day, Frank and Catherine are still making payments on that loan they took out to allow Shane to attend South Kent.
But the balance has dwindled and is now sitting at just $264 dollars owing. The final payment will come in the weeks ahead, a gratifying feeling for hard-working parents who want the satisfaction of paying off the entire balance themselves.
“It’s going to be awesome when it’s zero,” says Catherine. “I can’t believe it to be honest.”
With the benefit of hindsight, a 22-year-old Pinto has a better grasp on what this did for him seven years ago.
“When you’re younger, you don’t really realize what your parents do for you. How much they sacrifice and how much they put your life in front of theirs,” says Shane. “Now I realize how much they sacrificed for me financially. They would tell you that’s the best thing that happened to me and it’s pretty much the main reason why I’m here right now.”
In his final season at South Kent in 2017-18, Shane exploded for a team-leading 34 goals in 54 games and helped lead his team to a national championship.
In November of 2017, Shane announced his commitment to play at the University of North Dakota, fulfilling his dream of landing on a collegiate team’s radar. Frank marvels at the string of events that led to him winding up at North Dakota. Their head coach, Brad Berry, was supposed to watch him during a scouting visit but ended up missing a Friday game. It was a good thing, as Shane had a relatively flat performance. The next night, with Berry in attendance, Shane potted a hat trick, which likely sealed his invite to the North Dakota program.
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What also helped was the fact Catherine made a copy of that piece of paper that hangs in Shane’s bedroom. She wanted the recruiting officers at North Dakota to see the commitment their teenage son was putting into becoming a full-time hockey player.
“I think that was such a good idea for her to send that over,” says Frank. “It really showed them the character of this kid.”
Writing down his goals and posting them on his bedroom wall has become an annual tradition for Shane. He started at the age of 15 and now each summer, he writes down his goals for the upcoming hockey season.
The sheets of paper hang on his wall in chronological order, each one different than the last. They have now morphed into “vision boards” where Shane sets the specific targets for the year ahead. But it’s always done in his own handwriting, with a lot of time and care put into the process.
Entering his freshman season at North Dakota, he wrote the following on the sheet of paper that now hangs inside his bedroom: “Be Confident, Prepared, Persistent.”
He set a specific target of 15 goals and having a plus/minus rating of plus-10. (He achieved both by scoring 16 goals with a plus-19 rating.)
Sure enough, for this 2022-23 NHL regular season, Shane’s vision board is posted above his childhood bed. It lists specific targets for goals and points and things he wants to achieve. And this year’s vision board is also accompanied by an extra special dedication to the Pinto’s longtime family dog Urko, who passed away last summer.
“I think writing things down and seeing them, you just have that belief. And it’s what has always worked for me, so I keep doing it,” says Shane. “It just kind of manifested. It’s weird how it’s all worked out.”
(Photo: Richard T Gagnon / Getty Images)