Story by Anna Di Iorio-Reyes '28, Head Sports Editor, Colgate Maroon News
Thomas Larkin ’13 had retirement in the back of his mind in 2019. Having just won a championship with Adler Mannheim, a professional ice hockey team in Germany’s premier hockey league, and facing his own difficulties with injuries, he felt it might be time to step away from the ice.
“That was the point where I was considering maybe retiring,” Larkin said. “I had some injuries that started to build up. I was 29, I had finally won a championship.”
However, Larkin had a change of heart. The reason? Italy won the bid to host the 2026 Winter Olympics in Larkin’s hometown.
“The Olympics being on the radar in my hometown really motivated me,” Larkin said. “I was speaking with a friend of mine [after Italy won the bid] and told him, ‘I guess I have to keep playing now.’”
A British-born Italian, Larkin grew up in Italy, where he discovered his love for hockey. His passion for the sport took him to the U.S., where he played prep school hockey for Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. During his senior year of high school, he was recruited by Colgate, where he was a Raider for four years and eventually became the men’s ice hockey team captain as a senior. This past year, he served as the captain for Italy’s ice hockey team in the Milano-Cortina Olympics.
Hockey has taken Larkin all over the world, something he never imagined was possible when he was just a teenager, considering a move to the U.S.
“I was pretty self-determined,” Larkin said. “I didn’t want to go at first, and then I conceded it was a good opportunity, so I thought I’d try it for a year just to see how it would go.”
After hitting the ceiling of the limited competitive hockey scene in Italy by the age of 14 and wanting to further develop as a player, Larkin had two options in front of him: Switzerland or the United States. Larkin had his eyes set on playing at the collegiate level.
“I’d always wanted to play college hockey,” Larkin said. “That was kind of my goal.”
With the help of his father, who grew up in Boston and knew how to navigate the prep school route, Larkin found his way to Phillips Exeter.
During his sophomore year, Larkin was a third-line winger, going mostly unnoticed by college scouts. But, going into his junior year, a coach suggested Larkin try switching to defense, and he began to excel.
“That summer, I wasn’t even thinking of the NHL or the draft or anything,” Larkin said. “I did a couple of showcase tournaments and ended up on Central Scouting for the NHL. I was a B-rated prospect [out of an A, B, or C ranking], and suddenly my phone started ringing, and I had coaches calling me left and right.”
Larkin ended up being drafted 137th overall by the Columbus Blue Jackets in 2009, but he still wanted to realize his dream of playing college hockey. Despite having a broad range of options, Larkin said he settled on Colgate for a variety of reasons, from the campus environment to the academic rigor.
“I went up for a visit and just fell in love with the campus and with the culture and everything,” Larkin said. “I don’t have to pump Colgate’s tires enough as far as how beautiful it is. I also really wanted to play in the ECAC, especially, and I still valued the academics really highly.”
Larkin soon found that the unique style of college hockey, which is more unpredictable than professional hockey, rewarded the offensive qualities in his defensive play.
“In college, I was a little bit all over the place trying to do everything,” Larkin said. “It was more free-flowing and a lot of fun. It was a lot more instinctual hockey. You never knew what you were going to get because you had guys really just throw a puck out there and try to outcompete their opponents.”
Larkin noted how the team atmosphere also played a big role in the excitement of college hockey. For the past three years, Larkin has even been playing with two of his old teammates, Tyson Spink and Tylor Spink, both of whom graduated in 2016. Larkin says he still looks back happily on his time at Colgate.
“We talk fondly about Colgate all the time, about how crazy some of the concepts are, where for one ECAC tournament we played RPI in the first round, and the game went to triple overtime,” Larkin said. “It was a Sunday game, we got back in the wee hours of Monday morning. It’s a pretty cool example of that student-athlete balance, where you’re giving it your all in triple overtime — which we won by the way — and have to come back and get ready for an economics exam.”
Larkin was selected for Italy’s national team when he was a sophomore at Colgate and competed in two IIHF World Championship tournaments during his time as a Raider.
After Colgate, Larkin signed an entry-level contract with the Blue Jackets, which granted him two years in the American Hockey League. When the contract expired, Larkin made his way back to Europe and played in the Kontinental Hockey League, which emerged out of Russia’s professional hockey league. He then moved to the Deutsche Eishockey Liga to play with Mannheim and later the Schwenninger Wild Wings, which is his current team.
After Italy won the right to host the 2026 Olympics, Larkin was officially selected for the team last summer.
“The Olympics was the most amazing experience in my hockey career,” Larkin said. “Really, it brought me to tears, sitting there when everything was concrete and you can see the Olympic rings and the rink. It was so surreal.”
Larkin attributes a lot of the positives of his experience to the fact that the tournament was held in his hometown.
“It’s 10 minutes from where my mom grew up,” he said. “I took an e-scooter to go have afternoon coffee with my aunt and cousins. I had probably 50 people there supporting me from Colgate, from Exeter, from my family in Italy.”
Larkin’s Olympic experience also gave him the chance to reflect on his career.
“It was a cool full-circle moment,” he said. “I never thought in a million years that when I left 21 years ago, that I’d be playing in the Olympics at home of all places.”
Now, as his 14th season of professional hockey wraps up, Larkin knows that his career may be coming to a close as well.
“Every year could be my last,” Larkin said. “I’ve taken everything year by year, and I’m really enjoying every aspect of it. It’s been really cool to be able to look back with intention on how I got to this place, and I really appreciate everything it’s given me.”
