Patrick Williams, TheAHL.com Features Writer
Zach L’Heureux has become a nightly annoyance for AHL opponents.
He hits, and hits some more. He’s abrasive. He initiates. He agitates again and again.
There are the league-leading 117 penalty minutes, but there are also the 30 points and plus-17 rating through his first 40 pro games.
Put the whole package together, and you see why the Nashville Predators selected him with the 27th overall pick in the 2021 NHL Draft.
“I feel like my game, the way that I played the game, could transition well to pro,” said the Milwaukee Admirals’ rookie winger, who is sturdy enough at 6-0, 195 pounds.
So while it may be an easy temptation to try to rein in the 20-year-old L’Heureux, the Nashville organization and Milwaukee head coach Karl Taylor have taken something of a live-and-let-live approach. They’ll deal with a few extra penalties; he’s likely to draw his fair share of retaliatory penalties from fed-up opponents. Also, he’s going to be a distraction and a disruption for opponents to contend with each night.
“It’s like anything,” Taylor told TheAHL.com back in December. “You don’t want to take away from a player what their strengths are, so I think there’s a balance there. We’ve asked him to temper it in a couple areas. He’s playing disciplined and playing hard. We know he’s gonna take some penalties. We’re okay with that as long as they’re not retaliation. He knows that directly from us. We’re really focused on building his game at the American League level.
“You don’t want him to change to a point where he’s not competing at the level that you’re looking for. He is a driver for us, and we’re going to make sure that we’re reinforcing his strengths and allowing him to play freely enough to demand his energy and what he brings to a game.”
L’Heureux picked up a goal and an assist last night as the Admirals knocked off the visiting Chicago Wolves, 5-2, for the team’s 15th victory in a row, tied for fifth on the list of the longest winning streaks in AHL history.
With Nashville recalling the Admirals’ two leading scorers in Mark Jankowski and Egor Afanasyev earlier this week, Taylor had to shake up his lines last night and had L’Heureux on the left side of a line with Fedor Svechkov and Joakim Kemell – a trio of Predators first-rounders skating together. L’Heureux’s 12th goal of the season, as he took a neutral-zone tip from Tye Felhaber, accelerated past three Wolves defenders and snapped a shot five-hole, put Milwaukee ahead to stay.
“Out of our young group, he’s been the most pro-ready,” Taylor said of L’Heureux, a Montreal native who skated for Moncton and Halifax in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. “Right from the get-go, he’s had the biggest impact for us. He’s been ready to jump in the American League. He’s been our most consistent young player on our roster.”
This season has been about translating L’Heureux’s junior game to the pro level. And the atmosphere within the long-successful affiliation between Nashville and Milwaukee has been beneficial.
“It’s definitely a winning culture,” L’Heureux said. “You come here with the mindset to get better every day. I feel like my game’s really taken a step from junior and I’ve proven to myself that I can really play at this level.”
AHL competition is better, and so are L’Heureux’s fellow agitators from across the league. They know how to frustrate a rookie, or goad him into a particularly ill-timed penalty.
“I think I’ve been doing a half-decent job,” L’Heureux said of trying to navigate the opposition personalities who are trying to disrupt him and knock him off his game.
“I’m still learning a lot, but I definitely feel like I can really play my style of game,” said L’Heureux, whose penalty ledger includes 16 minors, four majors and five misconducts, as well as a match penalty that resulted in a two-game league suspension. “I always want to be out there, but my main concern is really just to not hurt the team. I’m cautious, but I know I’ve got to toe the line and not cross it.”
But it can be something of a tightrope act from one night to the next. By this point the Central Division knows L’Heureux well. He knows that. They know that.
“The game inside the game, how to play that chess match and how to pull guys into the penalties, I feel that’s something that I’ve done well myself,” L’Heureux explained. “You learn your ways around it, but that’s just pro hockey.”
Milwaukee, which has not lost since New Year’s Eve, has opened up a 16-point gap between themselves and the rest of the division. The Calder Cup Playoffs are not all that far away for a club that reached the Western Conference Finals last spring, and L’Heureux hopes to be part of another long run.
“We just want to be the best,” L’Heureux said bluntly. “We want to be number-one in the league. We know we’re the best in that locker room, and we want to prove it to everybody. We just want to prepare for the playoffs because at the end of the day all these games mean nothing if you can’t make a good run and win the championship.”
TheAHL.com features writer Patrick Williams has been on the American Hockey League beat for nearly two decades for outlets including NHL.com, Sportsnet, TSN, The Hockey News, SiriusXM NHL Network Radio and SLAM! Sports, and was most recently the co-host of The Hockey News On The ‘A’ podcast. He was the recipient of the AHL’s James H. Ellery Memorial Award for his outstanding coverage of the league in 2016.
This website aggregates and curates news articles, blog posts, and other content from a variety of external sources. While we aim to link back to the original source, this site does not own or claim ownership of any articles, posts, or other content indexed on this site. The views, opinions, and factual statements expressed in each piece of aggregated content belong solely to its respective author and publisher. We make no representations or warranties regarding the accuracy or completeness of aggregated content. Visitors are advised to verify facts and claims through the original source before reuse or redistribution.
