Denver junior forward Massimo Rizzo has signed a two-year, entry-level contract with the NHL’s Philadelphia Flyers.
Rizzo finished third on the Pioneers in scoring in 2023-24 with 44 points and was second with a career-high 34 assists. He also tallied 10 goals in 30 games. Nationally, he was among the nation’s leaders in scoring for most of the season before missing eight weeks and 14 games late in the campaign with a lower-body injury. He still finished tied for eighth in the country in assists and tied for 22nd in points, while his 1.57 points game was fifth-best on the year.
The Burnaby, B.C., native recorded at least a point in 22 of 30 games this season and returned from his injury last week in the Frozen Four, helping Denver defeat Boston University and Boston College to capture its NCAA-record 10th national championship and his second title after also winning with DU in 2022.
Rizzo opened the season by totaling seven combined assists in the season-opening weekend on Oct. 7-8 at Alaska, recording three helpers in the first game before setting a career high with four the next day. That start was part of a season-best eight-game point streak (5 goals, 12 assists) from Oct. 7-Nov. 4, which marked the longest season-opening point stretch by a Pioneer since Jarid Lukosevicius had points in each of his first nine contests in 2018-19 (8 goals, 5 assists). Rizzo matched a personal long with a four-game goal streak from Oct. 20-28 and was named the NCHC player of the month and the national co-player of the month for October – the first such awards of his career.
The center produced a career-high seven-game assist streak from Nov. 24-Jan. 5, recording two goals and 10 assists in that time. During that stretch, he had four points (goal, three assists) on Nov. 25 vs. Yale and scored his first career overtime goal on Dec. 9 at Western Michigan.
A Denver alternate captain, Rizzo had an eight-point weekend on Jan. 19-20 at Omaha, recording four points each night to match his career high for a single game (now five times). He had a goal and three assists while appearing in his 100th career game on Jan. 19 before tying a personal high with four assists on Jan. 20. Rizzo is the first Pioneer to record back-to-back four-point games and finish a weekend set with eight total points in DU contests going back to the start of the 2015-16 season.
Internationally, Rizzo represented Team Canada this past season at the 2023 Spengler Cup in Switzerland, becoming the first NCAA player to suit up for his home country at the event since DU’s own Ian Mitchell also did so in 2019. He recorded two assists in four games from Dec. 26-30.
Rizzo became the 102nd member of DU’s 100-point club on Nov. 11 at Arizona State, accomplishing the feat in just 87 games to be the second-quickest Pioneer to reach the century mark in the last decade (Dylan Gambrell, 86 games, 2018).
Rizzo finished his collegiate career with 126 points (39 goals, 87 assists) in 107 games and tied for 44th in program history in all-time scoring. His career 1.178 points-per-game average is the most among DU 100-point getters in the modern era (since 1990) and tied for 35th all-time among club members.
He repeated as an All-American this past season, earning West second team honors for the second straight season. Henrik Borgstrom was the last Denver player to earn back-to-back All-America accolades in 2016-17 and 2017-18. A member of the NCHC all-rookie team as a freshman in 2021-22, Rizzo was twice named to the all-NCHC team by earning first team honors in 2022-23 and second team accolades this past season in 2023-24.
As a sophomore in 2022-23, he led all NCHC players in overall scoring with 46 points (17 goals, 29 assists) and in league play with 31 points (11 goals, 20 assists). He produced a career-long 11-game point streak from Nov. 26, 2022-Jan. 14, 2023 (6 goals, 8 assists) and went on a five-game, multi-point streak from Oct. 21-Nov. 4, 2022 (4 goals, 9 assists), the longest such stretch by a Pioneer since Troy Terry also had a five-game multi-point run from Oct. 21-Nov. 4, 2018 (Jack Devine had a five-game multi-point streak as well in 2023-24).
Among the top rookies in the country in scoring in 2021-22, Rizzo recorded 12 goals and 24 assists in 39 games as a freshman. He scored a key insurance goal in the 2022 NCAA national championship game as Denver defeated Minnesota State 5-1 for the program’s then-record-tying ninth title.
Rizzo was selected by the Carolina Hurricanes prior to joining DU in the seventh round at 216th overall in the 2019 NHL Draft. He had his NHL rights and Carolina’s fifth-round pick in the 2025 draft traded to the Philadelphia Flyers on Aug. 9, 2023 in exchange for David Kase.
