Colorado
Fredrik Olofsson, Troy Terry and the Thunderbirds team that etched a place in Colorado youth hockey history: “It is pretty incredible”
Brandon Carlo walked into the locker room after another strong first period and couldn’t believe his eyes — or ears.
Carlo, the captain of his Colorado Thunderbirds U16 AAA team during the 2012-13 season, saw his teammates having a grand time with music blaring throughout the room. There was just one minor issue.
It was the first intermission of a tournament game — a semifinal, no less.
“They were blasting music in between periods like we had already won,” Carlo said. “I was like, ‘Can we turn that (stuff) off?’”
“They” were a room full of kids with dreams of playing professional hockey, but it was a reminder that they were still teenagers. Carlo quickly realized the culprits were future Avalanche forward Fredrik Olofsson and Lightning forward Mikey Eyssimont, who, along with Carlo, now a Bruins defenseman, were three of the five players from this particular Thunderbirds squad who reached the NHL.
The Thunderbirds have crafted a proud and successful history of developing players who matriculate to higher levels in the sport since the program began in 2002, but the 2012-13 U16 AAA team was a special one.
“Just trying to keep all of those guys in line when we were winning all the time was so hard,” Carlo said. “We had some fun personalities. We definitely had a confidence and a swagger that year, which was fun. At times I look back and wish I had more of that still. That group was incredible.
“Freddy and Mikey were always the (stuff) disturbers. They were just having fun and living in the moment and I respect it now.”
Carlo, Eyssimont and Olofsson were all born in 1996. They were joined by a diminutive kid from the ‘97 group, Troy Terry, as part of a collection of talent that produced one of the Thunderbirds’ most dominant seasons at any age level.
“I mean, it’s crazy to look back now, but I think then we knew how good of players we had,” said Terry, who now plays for the Ducks. “But to kind of take a step back and look now at how many guys made it to the NHL, it is pretty incredible. Those are all guys that I root for and happy to see we’re all doing well and playing at the highest level.”
Participation in youth hockey grew in Colorado after the Avalanche arrived from Quebec, with notable spikes after Stanley Cup runs in 1996 and 2001. The Thunderbirds were born after the second title.
It started with two teams in 2002, but began to grow a few years later until there was a club for each age group from 11 to 18.
“It took a few years to really get competitive and to where we were at,” said Angelo Ricci, who is the executive director of the Thunderbirds program and a skills coach for the Philadelphia Flyers. “We’ve had a lot of former Avs help our program, from (Joe) Sakic, (Pierre) Turgeon, (Adam) Foote, Milan Hejduk and others. The list goes on. Ken Klee. It was really nice to build a rapport with those guys. They were doing it for the right reasons, to help out the kids.”
The Thunderbirds were a formidable program by 2012, and Ricci’s U16 AAA team often had high expectations and successful results. None of the ‘96 kids were teenage phenoms along the lines of some of their opponents — namely future No. 1 pick Auston Matthews with the Arizona Bobcats. But there was no denying they were deep and talented.
Ricci knew early on that this group had the goods.
“I remember our first practice with those guys,” he said. “Troy Terry was like 125, 130 pounds soaking wet and not very tall yet. Then they start practicing and playing some 3-on-3, doing some drills and you see well, he’s smart and he’s got a good stick, strong on the puck. You could see bits and pieces with all of these guys.
“I’d love to say, ‘Yeah, I saw (a bunch of future NHL guys).’ What we saw was growth in their game and the ability to absorb information and want to be coached.”
One of the most talented youth hockey teams ever assembled in the state of Colorado could have been even greater, had a rising star in the coaching ranks not intervened. It was a powerhouse group, but its leading scorer from the previous year left the team early in the season.
Dylan Gambrell scored 12 points in his first four games before joining Dubuque in the United States Hockey League. The coach in Dubuque was Jim Montgomery, who took over the DU hockey program one year later.
“I was kind of not happy about that,” Ricci said with a hearty laugh. “No, it was our job to help the kids move up.”
Even without Gambrell, who went on to play at DU for Montgomery and has more than 200 NHL games on his resume, and Dominic Turgeon, who decided to play for Portland in the WHL that year, this Thunderbirds team was a juggernaut.
“That year, we were so good defensively. If we played about 70 games, I don’t know if we were allowing a goal per game,” Ricci said. “And we were scoring four, five or more almost every night. One thing is they really worked. We had some great practices, and that’s where you really saw their games grow.”
Ricci estimated the team’s final record was 65-4. The Thunderbirds went weeks at a time without losing.
There were days when they showed up at the rink, particularly against an opponent from the region, and the outcome was almost a foregone conclusion. For Carlo, one game against the Colorado Rampage stood out.
“I’ll never forget that one,” said Carlo, who grew up playing with some of the kids on the Rampage before switching to the Thunderbirds. “We knew we should be winning that game, and the other team kind of knew, too. We played them in a full-on soccer game, like full field, before the hockey game. We were just outside and I don’t know how exactly it came about, but it felt like there was more on the line with that soccer game.”
Besides being locker room DJs, Eyssimont and Olofsson were the team’s top two scorers and often played on a line with Terry. He has had the most decorated NHL career to date of the bunch, having scored 60 goals for Anaheim over the two previous seasons even though he was a fifth-round NHL draft pick.
“The joke between Mikey and I was always that we showed (Terry) the way,” Olofsson said. “A lot of guys maybe didn’t have the closest friends from school, because AAA (hockey) demanded so much time that we spent so much time with each other. We were just having a blast. It was super competitive within the team just to like, do stuff — to produce points, score goals, everything else. It was a race to get as much as possible.”
The AAA hockey life is not an easy one. There is a ton of travel, with several in-season tournaments, plus the teams in the Rocky Mountain region are spread out to begin with.
Håkan Olofsson has three sons who have all played hockey since they were little. Fredrik’s older brother, Gustav, played in the NHL for the Seattle Kraken and currently plays for their AHL club. Håkan has watched a lot of competitive youth hockey teams from different parts of the world.
The Olofsson kids played in Sweden, Austria and San Jose before the family settled in the Denver area.
“That team was very strong. They were a winning machine,” Håkan said. “Our favorite memories were less about the results — even though they usually won — and more about the camaraderie that we saw grow with the boys and the families that kept everything together. The entire parent group was great. We just had a good time together traveling to these tournaments.”
The Olofsson kids lived in Broomfield, but practices and home games were at Big Bear Ice Arena in Denver and Family Sports Center in Centennial. The Carlos lived in Colorado Springs, and Gambrell billeted with them until he left for the USHL.
That meant a lot of long car rides and long nights at the rink, particularly when they were stuck with a late practice time. Håkan noted that sometimes those late nights occurred simply because the guys on the team enjoyed hanging out together long after practice.
“Our parents were happy when we started to get our licenses,” Fredrik Olofsson said. “You’d get out of school and do your homework in the car if your parents were driving. Just hit the road and be at the rink until whenever. Maybe get home at like 10 (p.m.).
“We’d always be on the ice late because of school. We’d get done at 8:30, 9 and you’re just hurrying to get to Qdoba before it closes.”
Angie Carlo was the team’s manager, so she handled the logistics when they were on the road. She also drove her son and Gambrell to Denver from the Springs for practices and games, while also picking up goalie Cale Morris in Larkspur along the way.
One of her favorite memories from Brandon’s time with the Thunderbirds was when she had Domino’s Pizza delivered to the Boston airport because they arrived so late after a long travel day with a plane full of hungry teenagers.
“The kids all remember the goals they scored and the games they won,” Carlo said. “I remember some of the messes they left. No, honestly, that was such a great group of kids to be their manager. They were so respectful. It made my job easy.”
While the Thunderbirds could count their losses from that season on one hand, the final one was the most difficult.
Their ultimate goal was to reach the national championship tournament, which was held in Pittsburgh that season. The Thunderbirds fell just short, and one of Olofsson’s current teammates with the Avalanche played a big role in the upset at the district tournament in Utah.
“That’s a blast from the past,” Avs defenseman Caleb Jones said. “Yeah, my Dallas team beat them. We didn’t have the talent they had. They were good.”
The Dallas Stars Elite U16 team did have Jones and Max Letunov, who was a second-round pick and currently plays in the KHL with Avs prospect Nikolai Kovalenko.
And they had a goalie play one of the games of his life.
“Man, we were so much better than those guys,” Ricci said. “It was 2-1. I think the shots were 52 or 55 to 12. Nowadays, we would have made it to nationals because they’ve added at-large bids. Back then, only the district winners went.
“But it happens, just like you see in the NCAA basketball tournament.”
While the postseason ended with a disappointing loss, that team etched a place in Colorado youth hockey history because of all the future pros wearing Thunderbirds sweaters.
It wasn’t just the five NHL guys, either. Several others played in the AHL, ECHL or had a full NCAA career. Morris was named the NCAA goalie of the year at Notre Dame, and recently played with Gustav Olofsson for the Coachella Valley Firebirds against the Colorado Eagles in Loveland.
None of them were a phenom at 15 years old, but Carlo was in the NHL at 19 and Terry became a high-profile prospect after starring for the Pioneers in college and for the U.S. team at the world junior championships. Olofsson and Eyssimont had winding paths, but they’re all NHL regulars now.
“It just shows there is hope,” Ricci said. “There is a path if you stick to it and you have the skill set. It’s not just the NHL, but to get to college or play junior hockey. It’s fun to see a local guy succeed. It just sends a good message that you can play in a nontraditional hockey market.”
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Colorado
‘We couldn’t do this in another place’: Horror film looks to make Southern Colorado the next Hollywood
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KKTV) – It’s commonly understood that many of the best blockbusters are made in Southern California but a group of local filmmakers wants to prove Southern Colorado can be a destination for both aspiring and established auteurs.
Shooting began in Fountain this spring on ‘Devil In The Trunk’, a new horror film set in Colorado’s eastern plains.
“Devil In The Trunk is about a small-town woman who encounters a mysterious traveler driving this car right here who claims to have the actual devil trapped in the trunk of her car,” executive producer Leon Kelly said. “As you can imagine, when the devil comes to your small town, terrible and dangerous things can happen.”
Director, writer, and producer Evan Alderson said they wanted to make the film as Colorado as possible.
“We ended up finding a local Colorado writer, and we ended up collaborating to come up with this idea that could act as a love letter to Colorado,” he said.
While Colorado may be most famous for its soaring mountain peaks, Kelly said the plains were a much more fitting setting.
“It’s both beautiful and dangerous at the same time,” he said. “One of the underlying themes is the desolation and the loneliness and how vulnerable some folks can be in small towns and out in rural areas.”
Kelly said not only is the film meant to showcase Colorado’s natural beauty, but also to showcase the talent of the people who live there.
“It’s a proof of concept, to show that we have not only the talented people but the infrastructure that can support really high-quality, independent films,” he said. “We know we’ve got great filmmakers here, we know we have really talented craftspeople here, but they don’t necessarily have the opportunities to work on something like this on this scale that’s a narrative film.”
With the Sundance Film Festival set to make its debut in Boulder in 2027, Kelly said people are asking new questions about what Colorado can do for those looking to tell stories on the big screen.
“Can Colorado become a hub? Can that be a place, a destination where others come? Can that be a place where our own filmmakers can come into their own?” he said.
Alderson said once the film is finished they will put it out on the film festival circuit, and even look for distribution.
“That will look like a theatrical release, potentially, in an ideal world, or it will be straight to streaming services like Amazon, Hulu, that type of stuff,” he said.
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The now 19-year-old victim, who Brent Metz is accused of shooting in the face, took the stand in Metz’s trial Thursday. Metz, a former town of Mountain View councilman, was in the second day of his trial hearings.
The teenager, who has recovered well physically from the shooting back in September of 2024, told the story of what led up to the shooting, then said he blacked out for a period after he was shot.
The young man, Jack (CBS Colorado is not sharing the victim’s last name) said he and his younger friend went to ask for permission to take pictures at a scenic home near Conifer. At first, they parked outside the gated driveway and tried to figure out how to contact someone there. They then hopped a low fence and went up to the house.
Jack said he had difficulty locating a front door on the home, but the large property also had a garage and barn. They heard music coming from the barn, which is a common practice for people with animals to leave music playing to calm animals while away.
“We decided to knock on the barn door and then after a couple a minutes we decided to go back down the driveway,” Jack said in court.
The two friends went back over the fence and moved the car to a spot not blocking the driveway along the right-of-way at the road. Minutes later, Brent Metz drove up in his black GMC pickup truck, blocking their car in. Metz got out. Jack testified that he raised his hands at some point, a claim the defense questioned in cross examination. He related that he was getting out to try to greet the person getting out of the truck.
“I just (got) the door open I kind of turned to open my door and then turned to get out, and I saw someone get out, and then it was black,” Jack said.
The victim soon awoke bleeding and injured. “I looked down and I thought I was going to die. So I said that a couple times,” Jack testified.
“My mouth was on fire and it felt like my upper lip was gone, and I could taste little fragments,” Jack told the court. Jack’s friend and Metz tried to help him out of the car.
“The one who shot me was trying to help me get out of the car.”
Soon after, Metz left his side.
“He helped me sit down, and then he walked away,” Jack said.
“I started to realize I needed to stay as calm as I could, and when I got out of the car, I sat down, but I was very anxious,” Jack recalled.
Later, the victim had to have surgery in order to have the bullet fragments removed from his face. One of the fragments was more than an inch in size. He had trouble breathing through his right nostril due to the injuries to his nose. His eye was blackened for a long time, and a tooth was shattered.
Jack did not remember Metz saying much.
The testimony followed hours of testimony from a gun testing expert who looked at the weapon at the request of the prosecution. Derek Watkins is an engineer who said he has seen many claims of weapons not working properly.
“My experience is that, if you manufacture a firearm, at some point in time, it’s going, you’re going to run across the claim that it behaves in a defective manner,” Watkins said.
Metz’s defense is centered on a claim that the Sig Sauer P320 he had fired on its own without Metz pulling the trigger.
“There was nothing about the gun through the testing or through the examination of the components indicating it would function any other way than it was designed and left the factory,” Watkins said.
The defense had little luck getting Watkins to agree the gun could fire on its own, but did try to point out to the jury in questions that Watkins has previously testified in civil litigation about the gun’s integrity on behalf of the manufacturer.
The case continues Friday when it could wrap up. Metz faces four charges, the most serious of which is second-degree assault, but also two menacing charges and one of illegal discharge of a firearm.
On the cusp of the United States’ 250th anniversary and Colorado’s 150th, the Centennial State and its Catholic witnesses show modern Catholics a path forward.
Colorado celebrates its own 150th anniversary this year, as the rest of the country marks 250 years since the founding of the United States. The two milestones bear an interesting connection. In the very year of independence, one of the most important explorations of Colorado was undertaken by two Franciscan friars: Francisco Atanasio Domínguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante.
Faith Crosses the Rockies
While the importance of the Domínguez-Escalante Expedition should not be overestimated — it didn’t lead to any settlements and mostly focused on Utah — it nonetheless symbolizes the coming of the Christian faith into Colorado. Their expedition traces the path the Church followed into the Rockies, initially coming up from the south, to be met later from the East by miners. Leaving Santa Fe in the very month independence was declared, the two friars and their companions crossed into the modern-day boundaries of Colorado at the beginning of August 1776. They were not the first Spaniards to enter the territory of the Ute and Arapahoe tribes north of Nueva Mexico — Juan de Oñate was in 1598, and they also relied on the previous expeditions of Rivera — but the friars opened up more regular access to it as they laid the foundation for the Santa Fe Trail that would lead from New Mexico to Southern California.
The friars found in Colorado beautiful mountain vistas, remarking that it was cold even in the summer, as well as dangerous canyons and abandoned settlements in the Mesa Verde area. Their journal remarks: “We traveled a league and turned west through very pleasant narrow valleys with woods, very abundant with pastures, with different blooms and flowers.” (The Domínguez-Escalante Journal, translated by Fray Angelico Chavez, University of Utah Press, 15). Focusing on possible mission sites more than a continental passage, they insisted to all their companions that they should not “have any purpose other than the one we had, which was God’s glory and the good of souls” (40). Their desires would take 110 years to come to fruition with the founding of the first Catholic mission to Native Americans in Colorado, St. Ignatius, on the Southern Ute Reservation in Ignacio, Colorado, in 1886.
From Frontier Territory to Catholic Settlement
Catholic life was slow to arrive in Colorado compared to other parts of the nation, especially given the early settlement of New Mexico not far to the south. The Spanish were never able to create permanent settlements in Colorado, with one failed attempt near Pueblo in 1787. This is where 1776 regains its significance, even for the Church’s development in the region. It was only after the United States annexed the Southwest following the Mexican-American War in 1848 that Catholic settlement began. From the south, settlers arrived from Taos to establish San Luis on April 9, 1851. Not long after, in 1858, the Pikes Peak Goldrush brought a flood of miners from the East. From this mix of New Mexican settlers, Native missions and Catholic miners, the Catholic Church of Colorado finally emerged.
In 1860, Father Joseph Projectus Machebeuf arrived from Santa Fe and, in the eight years before he became Denver’s first bishop, the energetic priest established eighteen churches. I first encountered him through Willa Cather’s fictional portrayal of him as the character Vaillant in her novel, Death Comes for the Archbishop (and she relied heavily on Machebeuf’s letters for the book). Though primarily set in New Mexico, Cather brings the history of the Church in the Southwest to life through the vibrant, often tense meetings of Natives, Mexicans, newly arrived Americans and the French clergy seeking to unite them into a cohesive whole. It was Bishop Machebeuf who presided over the Church when Colorado became a state in 1876.
A Little-Known Bishop With An Important Lesson
His successor, Bishop Nicholas Matz, likewise came to Colorado as a missionary from France and experienced firsthand the difficulties miners faced in mountain towns, especially as a pastor in Georgetown. Seth Fabian brings this lesser-known figure to life in his new book, The Pilgrim Bishop: The Spiritual Biography of Nichols C. Matz (TAN Books, 2026).
Even after living in Colorado for nearly twelve years and working for the Archdiocese of Denver for six, I didn’t know much about this misunderstood and even controversial bishop, who often lacked support from his clergy. Even in a newly established state, still riding high from its mining operations, Bishop Matz interpreted the events around him with a lens formed by the violent revolutions of the Old World, fearing and overestimating the “potential reach of radical socialists or anarchists” (11).
Bishop Matz’s difficulty in addressing the social question in his diocese points to an ongoing difficulty for both Colorado and the entire nation in this celebratory year marking their founding. Dr. Fabian raises a fundamental question we must consider: “the question of how individual Catholics live their daily lives in a pluralist society” (386).
We have a strong legacy of Catholic settlement across the continent, of our ancestors seeking to consecrate this land to God. In fact, in just a few weeks, on June 11, the U.S. bishops will do so again when they consecrate the nation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Yet we face pressing challenges that call us to wade into difficult social questions, especially those related to technology and artificial intelligence, as Pope Leo XIV is expected to do in his first encyclical, to be released on May 25.
Despite the real challenges, if we advance, as Domínguez and Escalante did, seeking “God’s glory and the good of souls” above all else, we can continue our great Catholic legacy and open a path for future generations to follow.
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