By Jonah Fleisher
Halifax Mooseheads Forward Zachary L’Heureux
It was April 13th, and the Halifax Mooseheads of the QMJHL were on the wrong side of a blowout to the Charlottetown Islanders. The Mooseheads wound up losing the game 8-1, but their losses didn’t end there. Midway through the third period, Mooseheads goalie Alexis Gravel slashed Islanders forward Zach Beauregard in the inner thigh and Beauregard took exception, inciting a line brawl.
When all was said and done, a total of 76 penalty minutes had been handed out and six players were ejected from the game. Those six players were also each given a suspension, all but one of them sitting out for just one game. The other player? 2021 draft-eligible forward Zachary L’Heureux, suspended four games for “fighting after the original altercation [and] accumulation of codes.”
For L’Heureux and the Halifax Mooseheads, this was nothing new; in fact, this was L’Heureux’s fourth suspension of the season, having already sat out four games for unsportsmanlike conduct and taking off his helmet in a fight in November and three games for high sticking in February. The hot-headed prospect was also fresh off a two-game ban for unsportsmanlike conduct earlier in April.
“You want [him] to reign it in a little bit,” said Mooseheads coach Sylvain Favreau. “It’s our job as coaches — these kids are growing and there’s a bit of maturity that needs to happen. I think better handling emotions goes with it, but part of it is that you don’t want to take away from the player’s perspective and fieriness. You can’t teach a player to play that way. You want to make sure that you hone some of it in, but for the most part, it’s an intangible and a valuable asset for a player to have. It’s sort of guiding him on the right track and making sure that discipline is still there.”
While L’Heureux has struggled to remain on the ice at times, he still does bring a special compete level and competitive fire, a valuable attribute for a team to have.
“I’m an extremely emotional player,” said L’Heureux. “I thrive off of emotion and you’ve got to try to keep that mindset of ‘never too high, never too low.’ A lot of things — both good and bad — happen in a hockey game, and you just need to flip the page sometimes and not worry about it too much. It’s one of those things that I’ve had to deal with since I was a kid, even at the playground.
“You just want to be able to control it instead of taking yourself out of the game and doing something that will weigh your team down. You want to be the best version of yourself every game and the best player you can be, so you don’t negatively affect the team too much. But at the end of the day, I’m an emotional player and a fiery guy that is going to play the game on the edge. Occasionally, you’re going to control the line, but you need to control it and make sure it doesn’t happen too much and the consequences are not too damaging.”
General manager Cam Russell, for one, is quite unfazed by L’Heureux’s repeated suspensions and has a past experience to draw on which makes him think that, with just age and added maturity, the discipline will come.
“You’ve got to be careful because it’s what makes them the special players that they are,” said Russell. “There is a fine line there, but you have to be careful not to hold them back. I remember when Nathan MacKinnon was here, he played a similar way. At times he got frustrated, at times he’d take penalties, but they’re just such competitive guys and they want to win so badly that it kind of happens before the maturity sets in. You have to remember that him and MacKinnon were 16-, 17-year-old kids playing top minutes against the other teams’ best and oldest players. So, at times, it does get frustrating and with a little bit of experience and age, it usually falls into place.”
L’Heureux’s fiery nature stems from an immense passion for hockey that began as a young boy and holds stronger than ever to this day.
“Once I was 3 or 4 years old, my parents put me on skates,” said L’Heureux of his start in hockey. “My dad grew up playing and it was one of those passions. Born in Canada, it’s just one of those things that a lot of kids get into at an early age, and I fell in love with the sport right away.
“Up until Midget Junior you start realizing that you may have a shot at making it. Now with the draft coming up and all the excitement around it, it’s definitely fun for me. It’s fun to be a hockey player, and I think it’s just exciting for me and my family. Ever since day one it’s been a passion of mine and it hasn’t gone away; the spark is still there. It’s something that I enjoy doing.”
Of course, born in Montreal and in love with the game of hockey, L’Heureux has always been a Canadiens fan.
I always enjoyed being a [Canadiens] fan and I like to follow them,” he said. “Of course, my idol is Sidney Crosby, so there are definitely times where I enjoy watching Pittsburgh — and Washington, too — but in general I was a big Montreal fan.”
L’Heureux was selected 3rd overall by the Moncton Wildcats in the 2019 QMJHL Entry Draft and immediately saw success, racking up 53 points (20-33-53) in 55 games.
“It was definitely fun,” said L’Heureux. “It was a fun day, definitely exciting going to such a great place. I didn’t know too much about Moncton but as soon as I got picked it was definitely fun being able to enjoy that. The way the ‘Q’ does the draft and that whole setup, it was fun to be on the rink in front of everybody. At the end of the day, I wasn’t too worried about it. I didn’t think it meant very much at all. Until I showed up to training camp, I was just a pick — nothing else. I still had to prove myself and show everybody that I can play hockey. It was definitely fun and exciting, but it was just the beginning to a long summer before I showed up to training camp.”
L’Heureux’s efforts in his rookie season had him atop the rookie scoring leaderboard and at the end of the season, he was named to the QMJHL All-Rookie Team.
“It’s definitely good,” he said. “I had a great start which maybe took a little pressure off my shoulders. I was just trying to take it one game at a time — one day at a time — not worried too much. As a 16-year-old, I didn’t have a crazy amount of pressure with the team we had and the experience in front of me. I didn’t have to necessarily bring my A-game every night even though I wanted to. We had a lot of leaders — guys I can lean on and look up to and who can mold my game into being a pro-style player with all the pro guys that we had on the team. Little things like that really made the transition [to the Q] easier for me.”
In May 2019, the Mooseheads made it to the President’s Cup Finals in the QMJHL, ultimately falling to the Rouyn-Noranda Huskies four games to two. However, as hosts for that year’s Memorial Cup, they still got to enter into the tournament and, with strong play in the round-robin, earned a bye to the championship game. Unfortunately, Halifax would meet a similar fate in the championship game as they did in the President’s Cup Finals, being dispatched by their QMJHL counterparts, the Huskies. The final score of that game: once again, four to two.
The following season, Halifax would miss the playoffs, and with an aging roster, they began to sell off their older players as part of a youth movement. And one of the top young guys they brought in was none other than Zachary L’Heureux.
“It was definitely exciting,” said the young forward. “It was definitely a change at first and any time you get traded it’s scary but exciting at the same time. I was just getting settled in out in Moncton when I learned I was getting shipped to Halifax. I’ve played in the building. I knew how amazing the city was and I had only heard great things about it. So, showing up [in Halifax] was definitely exciting. When I showed up, my role was completely different than the year before. We had the youngest team in the CHL this year, so I had more of a leadership role. I took more time than I wanted to sink into that role and adapt to it, but it went well in the end.”
“We were in a situation where we had just played the Memorial Cup the year before and we still had some very good 19- and 20-year-old players left on our team,” Russell added on his reasoning for the trade. “Not enough to really compete, though, so the decision was made to trade those guys, unload some players, and get younger and build for the future. You can’t always do that just through the draft. We wanted to pick up a couple of established players as well as some really good draft picks, so that’s why the decision was made to trade for [Zach] and Elliott Desnoyers from Moncton. We just felt that both of those guys would be such important pieces of our team moving forward so the plan was to target them and go after them and we were fortunate that it worked out.”
With Halifax, L’Heureux was given the reins and he excelled, scoring 39 points (19-20-39) in 33 games in the COVID-shortened 2020-21 season. That pace would have netted him 65 points over the 55 games played in his rookie season, an increase of 12 points.
“As the year went on, my progression just got better and better,” said L’Heureux of his increased production in Halifax. “I didn’t want to worry too much about stats and stuff. I think my game’s a lot more than that. At the same time, it’s nice to see and compare it [to my previous output] and see that I did get better from the year before. At the end of the day, I just want to go out there, play my game, help make the team better, and be a good teammate.”
“These elite hockey players, they play for that exact reason: they want to be ‘the guy,’” said Favreau. “Now he has an opportunity to be just that. With being ‘the guy’ comes responsibilities, and it’s just a matter of him having a good grasp of those responsibilities and making sure there’s consistency game-in and game-out. If Zach L’Heureux has success, then usually our team has success too.
“At the end of the day, the goal is to put the puck in the net. It’s important to have those guys that can finish. He’s that guy: he has a knack for the net; he likes to be the difference maker. He’s good in tight and we’ve used him as a net-front guy on the powerplay because he can make plays on the goal line. He can handle the puck in tight spaces. He’s good with redirects and puck pursuit on the powerplay. But then he’s also got a devastating shot so coming down the wing, whether it’s an odd-man rush, a three-on-two or a two-on-one, any shot he puts on net is dangerous shot and a scoring opportunity. When you’re able to mix those two [styles of play], it certainly bodes well for your hockey club.”
Because of his fiery demeanor on the ice, L’Heureux draws a lot of comparisons to Boston Bruins winger Brad Marchand. The Halifax forward also likens his play to that of Calgary Flames winger Matthew Tkachuk, all three players using a gritty and competitive, but also skilled, style of play.
“I like to look at guys like Matthew Tkachuk or Brad Marchand,” said L’Heureux. “Those guys can bring a bit of everything to the table. They’re skilled players, but they’re also very gritty, very hard to play against, and they play in-your-face hockey. At the end of the day, they’re also great teammates; they do what’s best for the team, they stick up to anybody and aren’t afraid of anybody. They’re the first guys in a scrum to protect a teammate and the first ones to protect themselves.
“I think my competitiveness is number one. It’s what pushes me to be better every day and to be the best version of myself. I think I have good vision and good hockey sense: when I’m on the ice, I’m not just a north-south type of guy. I can get pucks in deep and bring them to the net, but there’s also times I’ll try to make a move and create some time and space and hopefully a scoring chance. Just having that good hockey sense, that vision, is big. The competitiveness kind of seeps into that — to always want to win my one-on-one battles and to be the first to enter one of those 50-50 battles along the boards.”
“Zach plays an old-style game where he takes pucks hard to the net, he takes pucks in dirty, tough areas that a lot of other players may be not willing to do,” added Russell. “He’s not the fastest guy but he finds a way to beat players one-on-one. It’s his size, skill, strength, and willingness to pay the price around the net.”
However, as with any prospect, L’Heureux has areas of his game that could use some work.
“I think his skating will need to improve,” Favreau noted. “It’s not that he’s not fast or quick, but there’s some technical work on his stride that we’re hopeful that he can work on this summer and that we’ll be working on with him. Besides that, it’s just maturing as a player, working on his feet, and making sure he puts all of it together on his way to a strong hockey career.”
Russell also mentioned his skating, noting too that L’Heureux’s discipline is still very much an area where they are hoping for and expecting improvement.
“His skating is good, not great,” he said. “He still finds a way to beat guys but like a lot of other kids, he can continue to work on that. Also, just the maturity of not getting frustrated at times. It was a tough year for him where he was only 17 [years old] but we leaned on him very heavily to be the guy to help us win every night, which is difficult to put a 17-year-old into that position. So at times he would get frustrated and took some penalties and was suspended a few times. That’ll come with age — the maturity — but also with some help. Like I said, he was in a tough situation. But those are the things that he has to improve on and I think you’ll see a big improvement in those areas next season.”
For L’Heureux, there is one key component of his skating that he has tried to hone in on: his acceleration.
“[My] number one [area for improvement] is definitely my acceleration,” said the young forward. “The game is leaning more towards having time and space and there are lots of speedy guys now — especially looking at guys like McDavid. Creating that time and space if extremely hard so I think that if I can improve my acceleration and get that extra 0.2 or 0.3 seconds, that can be huge, opening both the passing lanes and shooting lanes. So I think just getting faster as the years and months go by is my number one focus in getting ready for the NHL.”
Despite a large amount of adversity this year, L’Heureux has kept his head held high and continued working towards his goal of playing in the NHL. As the draft inched ever closer, he made a concerted effort to not get caught up in the pressure.
“You try not to think about it too much,” said L’Heureux. “There’s obviously pressure. You hear it everywhere — whenever you open your phone or talk to people, that’s the number one thing that comes up — so that’s something that, now that the season’s over, I can sit down and think about it and enjoy it more.
“When the season’s going, you try not to think about it. You just try to play your game and show the scouts what you’ve got. You worry about the other stuff later. But the draft’s getting closer and closer now and teams are reaching out so it’s getting a lot more exciting. At the same time, I just want to get my summer training going so wherever I show up to training camp in August, I’m ready.”
One thing that’s made his draft year easier is having teammates who have already been through the process. In fact, three of his teammates have been drafted by NHL teams: goalie Alexis Gravel, to Chigaco; defenseman Justin Barron, to Colorado; and forward Elliot Desnoyers, to Philadelphia.
“It’s key,” said L’Heureux on being able to rely on his teammates. “Their draft was later during the season this year, so I was able to experience that with them. I was with Elliot when he got drafted and it was definitely exciting for him. I was obviously excited for him, too. It was cool to see and experience, and those guys are such high-level, pro guys that being able to lean on them and talk to them and see the little things that they do — they may be only a few years than me but I can still learn a lot from them and they’re still role models that I can look up to every day at the rink. It’s definitely great to have guys like that around.”
While Zach has had to count on those players this year, he will ultimately have to play that role in the future for his younger teammates. And that role fits L’Heureux like a glove, the leader that he is.
“Zach is an outgoing individual and he’s a kid that everyone likes in the dressing room,” said Favreau. “He likes to be the gatherer, at times the funny guy and at times the serious guy — a true competitor when the time comes. He does a pretty good job of juggling both and being a team guy first and foremost.
“He’s a player that is growing in maturity. He’s more of a guy that will lead by example on the ice with his work ethic. With that being said, he’s a kid that’s maturing so he just needs to be consistent in that facet of his game.”
“I’m not in the room as much as the players or the coaching staff, but Zach is an outgoing, energetic guy,” added Russell. “He’s a guy that’s always telling jokes, laughing, and having a good time, but when the puck drops, he’s a guy that’s out there competing and wanting to be the best every shift he’s out there. He’s a 17-year-old kid and it’s difficult for those guys to actually be the leaders on the team when they’re playing with guys that are 19 and 20 [years old]. But I think more than anything he leads by example on the ice.”
In L’Heureux, a team gets a lot more than just his on-ice skills. They get his intangibles. A player who is fearless. A leader. Someone who will stick up for himself and his teammates. A player who, for better or for worse, would do anything to win.
All that’s left to do is for L’Heureux to put it all together.