Nate Bienstock fell in love with Quinnipiac University ice hockey as a little kid, watching the Bobcats in the 2013 and 2016 NCAA championship games. No matter that he lived 140 miles from Quinnipiac’s Connecticut campus – Nate dreamt of skating in the navy and gold of his favorite school.
Growing up, Nate and his dad, David, would frequently make the 30-minute drive to watch Princeton hockey, especially whenever Quinnipiac came to town.
After one of those games, on Dec. 29, 2015, a Quinnipiac team manager flipped a puck to the seven-year-old Nate. That puck, and the picture that David took of Nate afterward, sit on his bedside table, to this day.
But for most of Nate’s childhood, he thought Quinnipiac was a far-fetched dream. It’s rare for top collegiate programs to recruit New Jersey players who are still skating for their high school teams, but it does happen. For example, Christian Brothers junior Nicholas Desiderio committed to play at Providence College this past December.
By the time most of New Jersey’s top players are in a position to commit to a Division 1 program, they’ve typically left the high school hockey landscape in favor of playing at out-of-state prep schools or at higher levels, like the British Columbia Hockey League or the United States Hockey League.
“I’d always say, ‘Well maybe Quinnipiac will call’”, David said. “He’d always say ‘Yeah, right, Dad.’ He never believed that it’d actually be possible.”
But on Aug. 31, 2024, Quinnipiac came calling. Within 48 hours, Nate made his official visit and verbally committed.
“I’d always say, ‘Well maybe Quinnipiac will call.’ He’d always say ‘Yeah, right, Dad.’”
David Bienstock, Nate’s father
Nate’s dream had materialized, but for most of the nine years between catching that puck and now, his junior year, it seemed more like a pipe dream. For most of his youth career, Nate skated under the radar, but that changed as he entered high school. Nate’s development into one of New Jersey’s premier talents reached a crescendo last summer.
Sept. 29, 2015 – Nate Bienstock captures a Quinnipiac puck after a game at Princeton University David Bienstock, used by permission
‘He sees the ice better’
At the start of his youth career, Nate was a third-line forward who wasn’t producing much for his club team, the New Jersey Rockets. Coaches were ready to cut him before his U13 club season and it wasn’t until a new coach arrived in August of 2020 that things shifted.
Matt Juneau came over from the North Jersey Avalanche club team and is now in his fifth year coaching Nate with the Rockets. He’s also the head coach at St. Joseph (Mont.), which is ranked No. 4 in the NJ.com Top 20.
“I didn’t agree with the prior assessment of Nate before I came in,” Juneau said. “I saw potential right away when I watched him play.”
Nate immediately gravitated toward Juneau’s coaching style and got comfortable enough to suggest a move to defense. He wanted more ice time, and there were open spots on the blue line.
“I saw potential right away when I watched him play.”
Matt Juneau, Coach, New Jersey Rockets
Injuries within the Rockets’ forward group forced Nate to pinball back and forth between positions for about a year. But at Hillsborough, he was thriving on defense, with 19 goals and 40 points as a freshman, helping to lead the Raiders to the Public A state final. That season offered a glimpse into what was coming soon.
“The first time I saw Nate as a freshman, he had one of the hardest shots that I’ve seen,” Hillsborough coach Matt Janos said. “He’s so dynamic from both ends of the ice. He slows the game down. He really is a quarterback, not just on the power play but at even strength. He sees the ice better than 90 percent of the kids at the high school level.”
Nate found early success as a defenseman due to the skills he’d learned as a forward. He started moving the puck into open gaps and seams that his opponents weren’t seeing. Once he gained more confidence passing the puck, he’d often join the offensive rush.
“Playing forward helped a lot with all my offensive skills,” Bienstock said. “On defense, I just learned stick habits and backward skating. But I still had those offensive tools that I learned from playing forward. With a little bit of time over that first year, I learned how to implement them while playing defense and it just kept getting better and better.”
Highlights from a 2-goal, 3-assist game for Bienstock this season
As a sophomore at Hillsborough, Nate’s scoring jumped to 22 goals and 70 points. This year, he’s taken off. He’s tied for the state lead in goals (45) and is first in points (89).
“He struggled to score as a forward,” Juneau said. “Once he moved to defense, he just had the ability to see the ice better than pretty much everyone out there. He’s got a really high IQ in terms of just understanding positions and spatial awareness. He’s got an elite shot. He can really shoot the puck. That’s part of why he’s kind of taken off the way he has. It was pretty clear early last year in his age group that he was one of the best defensemen in the U.S.”
Next-level opportunities
As Nate kept improving, he began to get recognized on a national level. At a club tournament during Labor Day weekend of 2023, he landed on the radar of executives from the Green Bay Gamblers of the United States Hockey League.
The USHL is the top junior hockey league in the United States, with more than 910 alumni on NCAA D1 rosters prior to the start of the 2024-25 season, according to league data. There were also more than 195 alumni on NHL opening-night rosters.
In Nov. 2023, the agency O2K reached out to the Bienstocks to offer their services to help Nate navigate his future in hockey. The family has worked with O2K agent Will Dahlquist ever since.
O2K was established in 2004 and has worked its way up the ladder in professional hockey. It currently represents 44 NHL players, including Stanley Cup champion TJ Oshie, Minnesota Wild captain Jared Spurgeon, All-Star Vincent Trocheck, and 2023 Big Ten Player of the Year Matthew Knies, according to its website.
“Hockey’s a different animal than football, baseball, and basketball,” Dahlquist said. “It’s the only sport where there’s a junior league before you go to college. There’s a whole infrastructure where there’s junior team GMs and scouts and they’re all watching and having a full-scale draft like what you see in the NHL, but for 15 and 16-year-olds. Then there’s navigating juniors and college scholarships, especially with NIL now. There’s a lot that goes into it and it’s all just advising and being a middleman in terms of connecting schools and using our experience to help Nate navigate the whole hockey landscape.”
By the time of the 2024 USHL draft, at least one other team had shown significant interest in Nate, and Green Bay decided to seal the deal by trading up to select him as the 97th overall pick.
“Green Bay is a good fit for Nate,” Dahlquist said. “You want to go where people like you. If people are showing interest and using their actions to show that they like you, that’s probably as good a fit as anything.”
Two months later, in July, 2024, Nate was at the US National Development Camp, which is where coaches from Quinnipiac first took notice. On August 31, Quinnipiac associate head coach Joe Dumais first reached out to Nate and his dad to try and get Nate on campus as soon as possible.
“If people are showing interest and using their actions to show that they like you, that’s probably as good a fit as anything.”
Will Dahlquist, sports agent
The only problem was that Nate was in Boston for the weekend at a club tournament. Nate wrapped up the championship game and immediately made the two-hour drive with his father to Quinnipiac, where the coaches were waiting for him.
“I slept four hours the night before because I was so excited,” Nate said. “We got there around 5:00 for a tour and it was beautiful. It was absolutely amazing. I didn’t know what to expect going in. I knew they were a great program with great coaching and that [they’d] won a national championship two years ago. The rink was awesome.”
That same day, Quinnipiac offered Nate a full scholarship. Sitting in the recently renovated $1.5 million team lounge, Nate could not stop smiling as his childhood dream was coming true.
Nate called to verbally commit the next day and David made him break the news to the other schools that were recruiting him as well.
“It was just an emotional weekend,” David said. “He was drained. I was pretty adamant with him that we didn’t know what to expect and we were going to take it in and go home and not do anything on the spot. That’s exactly what happened. They presented the offer, which was unbelievable. We couldn’t turn it down but we said we need to think about it. Then basically he called them up the next morning and just took it.”
Leaving home early
While Quinnipiac is the desired destination, everything else until that point remains up in the air.
Nate could come back to Hillsborough and try to help lead the Raiders to a Skyland Cup and state title. He could also leave, and go live in Green Bay while playing with the Gamblers full-time, with an eye on a future in professional hockey.
After that, he could enroll at Quinnipiac, or play another year of junior hockey and delay the start of his collegiate career.
“A lot of seniors are sad about leaving high school, but it hasn’t really hit me like that yet,” Nate said. “Even my coaches said that they’re treating this high school season as my last year.”
Those closest to Nate understand that he’ll need to leave home at some point. That doesn’t mean they’re not going to miss him endlessly, though.
“When he got drafted, the word between me and him was that he’d be doing himself a disservice, or [that] something went terribly wrong if he’s [with us] as a senior,” Hillsborough’s Coach Janos said. “As a coach you want these kids to excel at their highest level.”
Regardless of where he’ll be living next year, Nate will have people in his corner. Juneau and Janos are both staunch supporters and believe his game will translate at the higher levels. His family won’t ever leave his side, even if they have to travel to Wisconsin, and then Connecticut, to watch him play.
Nathan Bienstock (19) of Hillsborough tries to score against Ridge goalie Matt DeMaio in the third period during the boys ice hockey game between Hillsborough and Ridge Scott Faytok For NJ.com
“I feel like I’m counting down, in a sad way, these trips that I have left with him,” David said. “These trips for hockey have become all-encompassing. We travel 10 to 13 times a year. It’s expensive. It’s time-consuming. It’s exhausting. But I try not to complain about it because I know it’s coming to an end here pretty soon. I know I’m going to miss it when it’s over.”
Nate will be eager to show how far he’s come in just three short years and will be thanking the people who got him here along the way.
“I was a late bloomer,” Nate said. “There were always kids better than me when I was younger. But my dad instilled a good work ethic in me and I always just seemed to get better each year. I know I can play high-level hockey.”
Donovan Hugel can be reached at dhugel@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on X at @donohugel.
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