Ilia Morozov was working out in the gym late in the school year when his coach at Miami University, Anthony Noreen, was touring a recruit.<\/p>\n
“One of the comments Ilia made was, oh, I’m on lesson 30-something of Duolingo, learning French,” Noreen said. “He’s like, yeah, I want to learn another language. I don’t really like Spanish that much, so I figured I’ll start learning French.”<\/p>\n
Because learning English well enough to graduate high school in two years and start college at age 16, while also being a top-level hockey player, hasn’t been enough of a challenge for Morozov.<\/p>\n
“He’s just one of these kids that no matter what he does, he sinks himself into it and he excels at it,” Noreen said. “He’s in finance. And if you do any research at all on Miami University, our business program, Farmer’s School of Business, is world renowned. It’s one of the best business schools in the country, it’s one of the best business schools in the world, and finance is our hardest and most demanding major.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“So now not only is he accelerated and coming in and getting to campus as a 16-year-old, in class as a 17-year-old, but he’s in finance, which is the hardest and most demanding major at our university.”<\/p>\n
And he also stood out as Miami’s top center. The 17-year-old had 20 points (eight goals, 12 assists) in 36 games as the second-youngest player in NCAA men’s hockey. He also helped Miami finish 18-16-2 after it went 3-28-3 last season, the first time the school had a winning record since going 25-14-1 in 2014-15.<\/p>\n
Morozov is No. 10 on NHL Central Scouting’s final ranking of North American skaters.<\/p>\n
“I think it went pretty good,” Morozov said. “I think we did a pretty good turnaround in Miami, and it personally went pretty good. Good numbers, a lot of ice time. Coaches trusted me.”<\/p>\n
Morozov gave them good reason to trust him.<\/p>\n
\\\\”\\\\He is as responsible in his own end as he is offensively,” Central Scouting’s Pat Cullen said. “He can create offense, he can shoot it. His size, he plays very physical. He’s your definition of a two-way centerman. … He’s a guy they can use as a shutdown center if they need. Really responsible in his own end of the rink. He doesn’t cheat, he plays an honest game. Sometimes kids at that age are cheating to create offense. You never see that for him. I think he’ll grow offensively a little more.”<\/p>\n
And that trust has grown for several seasons since Noreen first saw Morozov at age 15 in 2023, playing in a futures tournament hosted by Tri-City of the United States Hockey League, where Noreen was coaching.<\/p>\n
“I think in the last all-star game, his team won 6-0 and he had five goals and an assist and was clearly the best player on the ice, and obviously someone that we just started building a relationship with,” he said.<\/p>\n
Morozov was playing for the Windy City Storm 15 AAA team based in Palatine, Illinois, about 30 miles northwest of Chicago.<\/p>\n
Leaving his native Russia (Moscow) for North America was a choice made by Morozov and his family for him to advance his hockey career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ilia Morozov was working out in the gym late in the school year when his coach at Miami…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":743897,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":["post-743896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=743896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743896\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/743897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=743896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=743896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=743896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}