Dean’s a dandy
Mount Pearl teen has plenty of hockey upside, but first will skate in Canada Winter Games
“It’s hard to find an asset that he doesn’t possess already.”
Dan Del Monte Zach Dean’s coach in Mississauga, Ont.
His name is Zach Dean, and most hockey fans in this province haven’t heard of him. They will.
Dean is a just-turned-16year-old hockey player from Mount Pearl who will be suiting up for Newfoundland and Labrador at the Canada Winter Games which open Friday in Red Deer, Alta., and while he’s got a ways to go yet, Dean is on the right track to a career in the game.
“It’s hard to find an asset that he doesn’t possess already,” says Dean’s coach in Mississauga, Ont., Dan Del Monte. “He’s an elite skater, he’s got great hands, he’s got a bomb of a shot. He makes players around him better.
“There’s isn’t much that you can look at and say, ‘Yeah, I think this could hold him back.’ It’s really going to come down to how much he wants it, and if he wants it, he can pretty much do whatever he wants.”
Newfoundland and Labrador produces a ton of good, young hockey players … for this province. But the really good ones, good enough to take it to another level and play and produce in major junior and college Zach Dean of Mount Pearl hasn’t missed a beat since joining the Toronto Young Nats minor midget team in the Greater Toronto Hockey League. He’s among his team’s scoring leaders and is a sure-fire top 10 pick in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League draft, if he opts to go that route.
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hockey, are very rare. Dean has a chance at being
one of those hockey players, following in the footsteps of Alex
Newhook, the best and most talked hockey player about to come along since Daniel Cleary and Harold Druken, and a projected first-round NHL draft pick in June.
Dean is a product of the Tricom Thunder AAA bantam squad, which won the Atlantic championship last season. He was MVP of that event.
This season, he opted to play in the renowned Greater Toronto Hockey League, the GTHL which has produced its share of Ontario-born Nhlers.
Dean hasn’t missed a beat, piling up 30 goals and 44 assists in 46 games — according to the latest stats report — and is one of the scoring leaders on the Toronto Young Nationals minor midget (first-year midget players) team.
“There hasn’t been much of an adjustment for him, to be honest,” Del Monte said. “He came in here at the beginning and I think having been through the league once and seeing each of the teams, he’s found his comfort level and since then he’s been lights out, one of the best players in the league.
“And the GTHL gets players from all over, from the U.S. as far as Russia. This is more AAAA hockey than AAA, if there is such a thing.”
Dean isn’t certain if he’ll be going the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League route (the QMJHL holds the rights of players from Newfoundland and Labrador, despite the fact the St. John’s Fog Devils last played in 2008) or the NCAA, following the footsteps of Newhook, who is bound for Boston College next season.
Of course, they all say that, playing the college card, so it will come down to which team selects him in the QMJHL draft and which universities are offering the most lucrative free ride.
He’s a slam dunk to go top 10 in the junior draft, and will most likely be a top five selection if he commits to the QMJHL.