Picco, a 19-year-old defenceman for the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League’s Rimouski Oceanic, suffered only broken teeth, a broken jaw and broken toe after tumbling off a 100-metre-high cliff near midnight Saturday.
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Picco and a group arrived on Signal Hill in a limousine. They were celebrating Nathan Noel’s drafting by the Chicago Blackhawks Saturday.
Emergency services responded to the scene within minutes, but it took rescuers about an hour of searching the base of the cliff with flashlights to locate Picco.
The rescue took about three hours, according to the St. John’s Regional Fire Department, not including the hour it took personnel to find Picco.
Picco just completed his third season with the Oceanic, picking up a pair of goals and 18 assists in 54 games.
In 160 career regular season and playoff games in Rimouski, the six-foot-three, 220-pound Picco has seven goals and 35 assists.
Picco, who will return to Rimouski for a fourth year, won the QMJHL championship and the President’s Cup in 2014-15, and played in the Memorial Cup.
