Rookie ‘agitator’ fits with Admirals
L’Heureux has racked up points and penalties
Zach L’Heureux is far more complex than a couple of statistics, yet the numbers paint quite a picture.
The 20-year-old first-year pro could finish the AHL regular season this weekend as the Milwaukee Admirals’ scoring leader. At worst, he’ll be third.
He also will finish as the team’s leader in penalty minutes. Not by a little, by a three-to-one margin. By more than two hours.
Two. Whole. Hours.
That’s the Zach L’Heureux his bosses traded up to pick, who’s popular with his teammates and their kids, who’ll likely graduate to the NHL next season and who – even with numerous suggestions from the well-intentioned – really isn’t going to change all that much.
“From Day 1 he’s been great,” said Admirals captain Kevin Gravel. “You could tell early on that his game, his understanding of the game, has a little bit of a sense of maturity to it.
“I know he’s done some things in the past, the suspensions and whatnot, but when you’re on his team, it serves a role and it helps you out as a team. We know that’s part of his game. He’s very good at playing that kind of role as an agitator. He walks that line, on the edge, and sometimes it’s going to get crossed. That’s just part of it. That’s how it goes.
“Having that edge to his game is what makes him a special player, what makes him so good.”
The Admirals, who have the Central Division title locked up, entered this week with three games left in the regular season – Wednesday and Saturday at the UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena and Sunday at Grand Rapids.
Then they’ll have a first-round bye before starting the playoffs May 8.
L’Heureux (pronounced luh-ROO) has 18 goals and 28 assists for 46 points, leaving him behind only Egor Afanasyev (48) and Mark Jankowski (47) for the team lead, and he ranks eighth among rookies.
The first-year pro has been a part of the power play and penalty kill. He is within three games of the team lead for games played with 65, despite two suspensions totaling three games.
And the penalty minutes? The 5-foot-11, 197-pound left wing entered the week with 185, another three games’ worth of time in the box. Afanasyev is second with 60 minutes. Lehigh Valley’s Garrett Wilson with 210 is the only player with more than L’Heureux.
L’Heureux doesn’t shy from his reputation, role or numbers.
“Yeah, I’ll go out there and get stupid penalties every now and again,” he said. “But as long as I’m not making it a reoccurring thing and I’m not hurting the team, that’s all I’m focusing on now.
“The suspensions and stuff too, every now and again your wires are going to cross and you’re going to go ape----, but at the end of the day, as long as you’re not doing it every day, not hurting your team, they’re things you can live with and deal with.
“I think I’ve done a good job so far this year, but obviously there’s still room to improve in the years to come.”
The Predators like the way L’Heureux is wired, and they love the way he plays.
In four seasons in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League – two before being drafted and two after – he averaged more than a point per game. He also was suspended nine times for incidents that included highsticking, unsportsmanlike conduct and fighting, the longest for 10 games for jabbing his stick toward opposing fans through seams in the plexiglass along a players’ tunnel and hitting one of them.
Ask Scott Nichol, the Admirals general manager and Predators assistant GM, if drafting L’Heureux was a gamble and he’ll laugh. He and then-GM David Poile traded two second-round picks to take him at No. 27.
“It’s really hard for a first-year player, especially … a 20-year-old, to come into the league and have the impact that he’s had,” Nichol said. “He’s had a very positive impact.
“I think that he’s skirted the line a little bit … but he plays in all situations for us. For a young player coming in, his wall play, the way he wins battles, the way he protects pucks and just from the bottom of the circles to the net, he finds places, he finds seams, and he’s been scoring. So he’s had a really good year.”
Although a stretch of 13 straight games without a goal was frustrating, L’Heureux concurs it’s been a solid season, considering all the adjustments.
He has learned to go through daily life without family or a host family nearby – L’Heureux shares an apartment with fellow rookie Reid Shaefer – while playing the longest season he has at a higher level than ever.
“Playing the 200-foot game, being consistent every night,” L’Heureux said of his growth through the season. “It’s not every night you’re going to score a goal or get a bunch of points, but how can you help your team in other ways, on the kill, blocking shots, bringing energy, how you can drive a line.
“Just being a pro, what it’s like when you go home and you have 10 hours of your day with nothing to do, how you handle yourself when you go about your business. All those little things that in the pro world it’s definitely a little bit different, but I feel like I’ve done a good job adapting.”
L’Heureux will have more adjusting to do when he gets to the NHL, which presumably will happen at some point next season if not right out of training camp.
He’ll also have to continue to mature and continue to be aggressive while getting better at picking his spots when triggered.
“He’s grown a lot this year. The organization and our coaching staff are super proud of him,” Nichol said. “He’s got a lot of hockey left in him. We’ve got a good stretch here where he’s going to be leaned on and teams are going to poke at him and they’re going to prod him and hopefully he’s learned some of those lessons this year and he can keep it on the rails.” There’s nothing here L’Heureux hasn’t heard before. “I could name you 20 people that have sat me down and told me that story,” he said. “But at the end of the day, I knew that if I was going to make it pro, I was going to have to change the way I played, I’d have to adapt, I’d have to learn.
“I always felt it was just a learning process, one game at a time. You take two steps forward, you take one foot back sometimes, but as long as you’re always learning. That’s one thing, I always learn.”
While Admirals and Predators fans have heard about the suspensions and seen L’Heureux battle in the corners or be escorted to the penalty box, few see the casual side of him that literally matches his name. The French word “heureux” translates to “happy” in English.
Outside the locker room after practice he walks around the concourse with a smile and readily engages with the staff and passersby. And when teammate Cal O’Reilly’s three young children show up to the rink to skate on the UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena ice, L’Heureux turns into a playful kid himself.
“When I’m out there on the ice I’m so intense, so full of energy. I feel like, yeah, I’m like that off the ice as well but I’m not trying to rip anybody’s heads off or get into fights. I’m just a normal guy outside the rink,” L’Heureux said.
“A lot of people think that the way I play, I’m an agitator, that off the ice I might be … a bad guy. But it’s the complete opposite. I want to be the best teammate I’m able to be and just a normal guy.”
More than just a couple of stats.