OSHAWA, Ont. — Luca Marrelli saw the Sudbury Wolves following the puck to Andrew Gibson at the right point, turning their backs to him and collapsing in on the net. Sensing a chance to sneak down from the left point and anticipate an opportunity at the back post, he jumped, arriving at the net just in time to take the puck off goaltender Nathan Krawchuk’s pad and curl it around his skate and in.
Above him in the crowd, the moms of his Oshawa Generals teammates, gathered for the team’s annual mom’s night, celebrated with him. The goal was his 18th of the season, fourth among all OHL defensemen. Early in the second, he added an assist, snapping a shot-pass off Luke Torrance’s blade and in for his 71st point in 64 games, also fourth best among OHL D.
Holy YUCK 🤮#OSHvsSBY | #CBJ | @BlueJacketsNHL pic.twitter.com/rPAEmw8Odj
— Oshawa Generals (@Oshawa_Generals) March 16, 2025
After the game, while the moms waited to be let into the dressing room area, Marrelli was on his way to meet with Blue Jackets defenseman development coach Tommy Cross, visiting from Columbus to watch the team’s breakout third-round pick.
Before saying hello to Cross, he stopped in the hall outside the dressing room to talk about his mom, Melanie, who he lost in March 2022 after a battle with cancer.
“She was the most supportive person in my life and the person I leaned on the most, but it’s a curveball that life throws at you and you just have to really take all of the positives away from it,” he said. “She was a big believer in positivity and positive thinking so she wouldn’t want me to be sad. And hockey’s really an escape and something that makes me happy. Tonight’s mom’s night and I scored so it’s a little bit more of a special goal for me, really emotional, and she’s just another reason to do what I do.”
Melanie was a teacher and that lesson in positivity has stuck with the eldest of her two sons.
The Gens’ interim head coach Brad Malone, who was hired in September as a development coach in Oshawa and then promoted in December, lauds Marrelli’s leadership and the way he is with his peers.
“He’s a great kid to be around on a daily basis and we’re lucky to have him,” Malone said. “He’s vocal. He’s very social. He’s not afraid to talk to anybody and that kind of bleeds right in. And off the ice he’s an old-school leader — he’s capable of holding people accountable and asking them and demanding of them to do things that we need to do to win, and that’s not easy for a 19-year-old.”
Marrelli ranks fourth among OHL defensemen in goals and points this season. (Kalvin Taylor / Goodall Media)
Roger Hunt, the Generals’ general manager during Marrelli’s four seasons in Oshawa, talks about him as “very likable.”
“Even before (Melanie’s death) happened he was a very mature kid, he was very engaging and he was very involved,” Hunt said. “He keeps tabs on people. You can plonk him into any setting, whether it’s school, kids or adults because he’s so outgoing, comfortable and mature.”
In Marrelli’s 16-year-old season, Hunt got a call from Melanie before he’d ever even met her because she wanted to explain her situation as Luca moved away from home and started at a new school. As her cancer treatment progressed, Hunt said, “Luca was actually the strong one.”
“He would update me and I would almost be feeling upset and he was incredibly strong going through all that,” Hunt said. “And then I got a phone call one night and he was upset and he said, ‘Look, my mum’s taken a turn and we’re all going to go to the hospital to see her’ and at that point with how strong he’d been throughout the whole process, for him to be upset I knew that it was bad.”
Ever since, Luca has made the rink his happy place.
“Having a brother die in my own life, I know getting back to some sort of normality will help you cope with that, and I think for Luca that was a part of it and he got back to doing what he did and it was maybe a bit of a small distraction for small portions of his day,” Hunt said. “And he has dealt with it like I fully expected him to deal with it. I’m proud of him.”
Marrelli says who he is has a lot to do with the people who’ve influenced him. He lists his mom, his dad Antonio (or Tony), his old coach Anthony Hollyoak (who also died of cancer in March 2022) and his uncle Colin as the most influential people.
That uncle — Melanie was his only sister — is Colin Chaulk, the head coach of the AHL’s Bakersfield Condors.
During the last 10 years of Chaulk’s playing career and as he started climbing the ranks as a head coach, he ran a hockey school. Marrelli never missed one, driving with his Don Mills Flyers teammates to Sarnia, Ont., Fort Wayne, Ind., and Kalamazoo, Mich. Growing up, Marrelli spent three weeks every summer living with Chaulk in Fort Wayne so that he could skate with him. He spent some Christmases in Fort Wayne picking his brain at family dinners, too.
In recent years, they’ve skated together each summer in Toronto. Though he hasn’t been able to get out to Bakersfield after Oshawa went on a playoff run last year, his dad Tony and his younger brother Michael (who was drafted by Oshawa and Luca hopes will follow in his footsteps) have.
“Anything that I was ever doing — skills sessions, pickup skates, hockey camps — he was always there,” Chaulk said. “My two girls and (Melanie’s) two boys, we were always together any chance we had. We’re extremely close.”
Marrelli even wore No. 91 because of Chaulk, switching to No. 19 in Oshawa because John Tavares’ No. 91 is retired. After playing for years as “a really good goaltender,” it was Chaulk who told Marrelli “my nephew’s not going to be a goalie” and encouraged him to make the switch to defense.
“He’s probably the most instrumental and influential person in my hockey career up until now,” Marrelli said of Chaulk.
Chaulk continues to watch all of Marrelli’s scoring chances for and against on Sportlogiq. Last year, when Chaulk felt Marrelli wasn’t shooting the puck enough in his draft year, he drew attention to it and asked him to send a text after every game with how many shots he had. He challenged him to get to 100 shots on the season. Marrelli finished with 129. This season, he has already broken 200.
“He’s really witty. He starts to go ‘Not enough,’” Chaulk said, laughing as he recalled their postgame texts. “And then that little bugger, he’s like ‘five shots, seven shots’ and we had a little competition and of course, he blows it out of the water because he’s a smart kid and he’s analytical and next thing you know, I lost that wager terribly. But at the end of the day it worked out and he started creating more. Partly I’m coach, partly I’m a mentor but I want my nephew to love me, not hate me, and it’s not worth it to me. So I give him tips and I help him but I’d rather hug him and help him along the way than be a hard-nosed coach.”
There’s one game that all hockey schools do where every player gets a puck from the blue line down and they have to protect it from the crowd, making sure to keep their puck and knock their opponents’ out of the zone.
Most young kids dive into the action and quickly get their puck knocked out. At 10, after making the switch from goalie to defense, Marrelli would always carry his puck straight into the corner to hide.
“He had a lot of patience and poise and foresight of ‘Hey, I’m not going to go right in that battle right away. I’m going to be smart, I’m going to stay off to the side a little bit here and then when 10 guys get eliminated I’m going to have a better chance to win,’” Chaulk said. “In a lot of sports, like in soccer, you’ll see kids running to the ball, kicking it, running after it, and repeating. They don’t want to carry it. So that’s a big thing that you’re trying to instill in them and he got that right away. Skating with the puck. Shoulder checks. Knowing who gets it next. And you see him today and one of his biggest assets is that he’s got ice in his veins and on a forecheck he doesn’t panic. And that’s 10 years of him just doing it.”
Those who know Marrelli’s game best always start with his hockey sense.
“Very intellectual brain, moves the puck really well, and we’re just trying to add pace to his game because that’s what the NHL teams are worried about. He might be a little bit of a sleeper,” former Generals head coach Steve O’Rourke said in advance of the draft last year.
Hunt said Marrelli was a smart player even when he first got to Oshawa at 15. He turned 16 in October 2021, shortly after making the Generals as a fifth-round OHL Draft pick. That year, he played 62 games — very rare for a defenseman that young who was drafted that late.
But it was the smarts that allowed him to make the team, according to Hunt.
“He has never been blessed with a skating stride that looks fast, but very rarely do you see him get beat. His skating’s not an issue but he’s such a heady player and I think that’s what makes him so good,” Hunt said. “He’s just a smart D. It’s hard to compare to Evan Bouchard but something like that. Evan’s a guy that got a ton of points, he’s a right shot, a big shot, a smart player, not gifted with a good-looking skating style but they get there.”
Marrelli signed his entry-level contract with Columbus and is eligible to play in the AHL next season. (Ian Goodall / Goodall Media)
He was so good to start this year after a big summer that Hunt believes his play should have been worthy of an invite to Canada’s World Junior Selection Camp.
Chaulk said Marrelli was “always athletic, always a big, thick and strong kid.” He grew up playing high-level competitive baseball for the East York Bulldogs until his OHL Draft year, and also loves playing golf, tennis and volleyball. (He’s not all about sports, though, as he’ll tell you he’s also into chess and cooking). But now he’s a 6-foot-2, 185-pound, above-a-point-per-game, right-shot defenseman who has already been signed by his NHL club to an entry-level contract as a third-round pick.
“I wasn’t really a super highly touted guy coming into this league but it just shows that hard work and dedication,” he said.
Throughout this year, he has had visits or weekly check-ins from folks like Cross and director of hockey operations Rick Nash. The Blue Jackets have also done some video work with him and their strength and conditioning team have him on a program. “(Cross and Nash) have been really good for me,” Marrelli said.
On the ice, Marrelli describes himself as poised, smart, dedicated, confident and competitive.
Malone, who played more than 200 games in the NHL and played in the AHL last season before jumping right out of his playing career and into coaching, said Marrelli doesn’t get enough credit for that last one — for his competitiveness and “how good of a defender he is.”
“What he does offensively kind of speaks for itself but he’s heavily relied upon in all situations and you can trust him pretty much anywhere,” Malone said.
Coincidentally, Malone also played in Bakersfield under Chaulk the last three years, and so a lot of what he’s now teaching the Generals comes from Chaulk and is familiar to Marrelli — right down to his one-liners about “$8 million plays.” Malone jokes that Marrelli has some of Chaulk’s mannerisms, and Marrelli gives him a hard time for stealing Chaulk’s ideas.
“He kind of razzes me a little bit about the (coaching) similarities but Colin did a great job with him in terms of coaching him, the skill development, and his hockey sense is high-end because of it,” Malone said, laughing.
Though his and Malone’s sights are currently set on another deep playoff run with the Generals, because of his October birthday, Marrelli’s eligible to play in the AHL next year with the Cleveland Monsters (though the Monsters and Condors don’t play each other).
Hunt, Malone and Chaulk think Marrelli is ready for that next step, too.
“He’s serious, he’s a smart kid, and gosh as a little kid, he always wanted to know what the plan is. Like I don’t know how many times as a kid he asked his mum ‘What’s the plan? What’s the plan? What are we eating? What are we doing?’ And you look at him now and he’s going to turn pro and be on his own next year, and he’s organized, he’s an A student in school, it’s all there,” Chaulk said. “He’s a really good kid. He’s a good, responsible kid.”
Hunt’s not the only one who’s proud of him, either. Asked about his nephew and how far he has come, Chaulk’s voice cracks and breaks.
“Jeez. Emotional here for a second,” Chaulk said, pausing, his voice lowering to a whisper. “You wouldn’t know (what he has been through). You wouldn’t know. Because he was quiet about it. Any moment I have I bring (Melanie) up because I know how proud she was of him. Her boys were her life. It was ‘the boys, the boys, the boys, the boys.’ And he didn’t talk much about it. He plays it like he plays a forecheck, man. He plays it cool. He has been so mature. He has been so mature. … He’s handled like a frickin’ champ.”
(Top photo: Ian Goodall / Goodall Media)
