DeBrincat doing it on his own
Alex DeBrincat has no trouble remembering the events of Sept. 27, 2013.
Exasperated by the unceasing target on his back, DeBrincat lost his composure during a heated high school hockey game in Lake Forest, a small town about 40 miles north of Chicago. Ejected, he hit the showers early.
DeBrincat — 5-foot-7 then, 5-foot-7 now — sat out Lake Forest Academy’s next game to serve a suspension and contemplate life as a very skilled but very small forward. “He had a bit of the little man’s syndrome,” recalls Lake Forest coach Darrin Madeley, “where I think he’d been told he’s so small so many times that he would snow the goalie and accidentally fall on top of him, stuff like that.”
Bullying the bullies is a foolish undertaking for those in DeBrincat’s size bracket. In the stands, he came to that conclusion in a matter of minutes. “It was just one of those things,” DeBrincat says, “one of those realizations that I have a lot more fun playing than watching.”
The introspection paid dividends in the short term — “I don’t think he took four minutes in penalties the rest of the year,” Madeley says — and has helped drive success over the long haul.
DeBrincat, now a 19-year-old Chicago Blackhawks super prospect nearing the end of a historic junior career with the OHL’s Erie Otters, is no longer a slave to overcompensation.
A goal-scoring machine, his small build and other perceived shortcomings will be mere footnotes in due time. He is arriving at the perfect time.
DeBrincat accomplished something very rare on Monday in Oshawa, Ont.
Potting a pair of goals in a 4-3 Otters win over the Generals, the right-handed left winger became the first OHLer in 40 years to bag 50 goals in three consecutive seasons.
Dylan Strome, who shares a line and a billet family with DeBrincat, requires just 12 words to sum up his partner in crime: “Lethal shot. Quick release. Not many guys can do what he does.”
The only other modern-era OHLer to score 50 three times in a row is Dale McCourt, a forward for the Hamilton/St. Catharines Fincups in the 1970s. McCourt accrued 168 goals in 201 games; DeBrincat, the Otters’ franchise leader in goals, has 153 in 179 with 12 games left on the schedule.
Since moving from his hometown of Farmington Hills, Mi., to Erie, Pa., for the 2014-15 season, DeBrincat has produced an incredible 312 points, which works out to 1.74 per game.
One-timers, chip-ins, snapshots, dekes. Breakaways, give-and-gos, set plays, individual efforts. A smart player with a wicked shot, DeBrincat’s tallies come in various forms.
“He can do it on his own if he wants. He can protect the puck, stickhandle his way to the net, and get good, quality opportunities. He finds many ways to score,” Otters head coach Kris Knoblauch says. “And, as a guy who has scored as many goals as he has in the past three years, you have to do that.”
Some much-needed context: In his rookie year, DeBrincat rode shotgun to Connor McDavid, this generation’s Wayne Gretzky; and in his sophomore season, DeBrincat lined up beside Strome, an elite playmaker who has obliterated the OHL (332 points in 207 games).
DeBrincat played 128 regularseason games during his first two years, racking up 102 goals and 205 points while skating primarily with superstar centres (of those 128 games, McDavid and/or Strome appeared in 123).
Armed with a scary-good release, DeBrincat firmly established himself as the OHL’s premiere triggerman. The 170-pounder ranked second in total goals both seasons and compiled an impressive list of nightly performances: A five-goal game, a four-goal game and four hat tricks.
Chicago used its highest pick at last summer’s NHL draft to select DeBrincat in the second round, 39th overall. His ability to adapt to change helped win over the club’s scouting staff.
“Connor and Dylan play a different kind of game,” Mark Kelley, the Hawks’ vice-president of amateur scouting, says of McDavid and Strome.
“Dylan controls the puck, is almost a conductor who orchestrates. He doesn’t play as fast as Connor. So, we got to see him playing with two different players. And when you take it to this year, he’s been primarily playing with Taylor Raddysh and, again, the dynamics are different.”
It was not until the 2016-17 season, when DeBrincat became the focal point of the offence, that his underlying influence bubbled to the surface. Strome, whom the Arizona Coyotes sent back to Erie in late November, has appeared in only 23 of the Otters’ 56 games.
Even if USA Hockey controversially cut DeBrincat, a returnee, from its eventual gold medal-winning 2017 world junior roster a few months ago, the asterisk scribbled next to his name and gaudy point totals is fading fast.
“Any time those guys departed, Alex continued on,” Otters GM Dave Brown says. “Whether they were injured or at world juniors or whether they were playing with different linemates, he would continue the pace and continue to put numbers up and score.”
The Otters alternate captain — who famously passed through the OHL draft twice before signing as a 17-year-old free agent — has 51 goals in 51 games, putting him on pace for 63 goals. His league-leading 107 points is 14 more than No. 2 Raddysh.
“He finds those open soft spots,” Madeley says. “He knows where pucks are going to go on rebounds. And that’s just hockey IQ — being a step ahead — and that’s why he’s scoring 50 a year.”
DeBrincat is, by all accounts, an unassuming teenager.
He’s happy, polite, means well. He has odd habits, such as downing a Tim Hortons chocolate dip donut before every game at Erie Insurance Arena. He is a gamer, as in a video gamer (sports, not firstperson shooters). And, much to the chagrin of his teammates, he is not a fan of Red Lobster.
In hockey equipment, though, DeBrincat is a handful. “If you just knew Alex from the ice,” Knoblauch says, “you’d think he was a grouchy, miserable person.”
The diminutive sniper wants to be the next Johnny Gaudreau or Tyler Johnson — “two guys who have paved the way,” DeBrincat says, for creative and feisty wingers measuring below the 5-foot-8 marker. The size-matters stigma is “not totally out of the game yet but it’s working its way out and soon it’ll be out for good, I think.”
DeBrincat’s skating coach, Sean Perkins of Detroit-based Total Package Hockey, describes his client as a “deceptively quick” skater. Perkins extracted “bits and pieces” from the skating repertoires of Gaudreau, Johnson and smaller Hawks, like Patrick Kane and Artemi Panarin, and structured DeBrincat’s off-season training around learning how to better evade hits by tricking defenders mid-stride.