2000 Sharpshooter’s 50 points kept Carroll on the winning track

Moccia also showed that he could throw his modest weight around with the best.

David Moccia is the quiet type. The Archbishop Carroll junior prefers it that way. He leads by example. And once he hits the ice, he becomes a model for the other players. In an instant, the puck is behind the goalie, who is clueless as to how it got there. A pinpoint accurate shot, mixed with a certain tenacity when he had the puck, made Moccia a danger to opposing teams all season. He is a leading reason why Carroll advanced to the Division AA state title game, and why the Pats won their first Flyers Cup title since 1981. And he is The Inquirer’s Main Line/Delaware County ice hockey player of the year. The 5-foot-10, 160-pound center had his best season, leading the Pats with 50 points (23 goals and 27 assists). “I’ll never forget this year; it was a career year for me,” Moccia said. “I wanted to be someone on the team everyone could look up to; they could count on me to get that goal when we needed it. I wanted to be someone everyone on the team could respect. But I didn’t want to do that in a way where I had to speak up; where I just went out on the ice and did it.” Moccia likes to combine a physical style with his speed and finesse. Most of his goals this season came off odd-man rushes and breakaways. Still, Moccia was able to give Carroll a physical presence in the corners, even though he weighs only 160 pounds. He didn’t mind mucking it up, but he had to remind himself that it was his great shot and deceiving speed that made him so valuable to Carroll. “It was kind of tough when I would run into bigger guys and fall down, but the physical part of the game is something I wanted to incorporate as part of my game,” Moccia said. “If you hit someone and get them good, it gives you the upper hand, because they’ll look over their shoulder for you.” Moccia did more, however, skating by opponents than he did by skating into them. He scored a hat trick and had two assists in a 12-4 victory over Unionville in the Inter-County League Division AA playoffs.

In a 9-8 victory over Bishop Shanahan in the semifinals, Moccia scored the tying goal with four minutes to play and finished with two goals and two assists. What made Moccia dangerous was his shot. His quick release made him a threat to score at any time or from any place on the ice. Moccia says it’s something he has developed over the years of playing hockey. He has an uncanny sense of where the puck is and knows where to shoot it. “I don’t know where that comes from,” Moccia said. “I guess you can call it instinct, maybe, I’ve been playing so long.” Moccia began playing hockey when he was 7. When his family lived in Boston, he brought home a flyer about a local ice hockey program and presented it to his parents. They just shrugged it off as something that would pass. It didn’t. “My parents saw me as this scrawny, little kid,” Moccia remembered. “I was pretty skinny back then. They may have had a little fear I’d get hurt, but they gave me a chance to do what I wanted.” His father, Robert, changed jobs and the family moved to the Malvern area when Moccia was in grade school. It was a different world. The biggest obstacle, at first, was getting the language down. Moccia came to the area with a thick Boston accent, most of which has disappeared. “It was funny to me when we first moved here because I was like, ‘I’m not the one talking weird, it’s you guys who are talking weird,'” Moccia recalled. “It was real tough coming down here. I didn’t have any family or friends, because I was the new kid in school with the accent.” Moccia did, however, have hockey. He kept playing, and his game has developed to the point where he is one of the best underclassmen in the area. “David’s a kid who can make moves around people you wouldn’t expect him to do,” Carroll coach Bill Hammond said. “He’s a true competitor, and he just doesn’t give up.”