Prospect Dean Letourneau, a ‘skilled centerman’, learned to use height to his advantage

The final installment in a seven-part series highlighting players the Flyers might select in the first round of the NHL draft on June 28 in Las Vegas.

You could hear the surprise through the phone.

Dean Letourneau gave a big “Oh yeah?!” when he was told that he wouldn’t be the tallest player in the Flyers’ locker room if they drafted him. The 18-year-old Canadian, who has been mentioned as the team’s second first-rounder at No. 32 , is 6-foot-7 — the same height attributed to Flyers goalie Ivan Fedotov.

“I have long arms so I can put the puck in the different areas that some guys can’t, and make passes and make plays from different parts [of the ice],” Letourneau said about how he uses his size to his advantage. “I can keep defenders on my back using my big frame. So I mean, overall, just keeping guys as far away from the puck as possible.”

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A self-described centerman who can skate fast and has the hands to make big plays, Letourneau likens his game to that of Buffalo Sabres star Tage Thompson — who is 6-6. This past season, the St. Andrew’s College MVP scored 127 points (61 goals, 66 assists) in 56 regular-season games at the U18 AAA level and another 25 points in 14 games in the Prep Hockey Conference. And he did it all while sporting an “A” for the prep school.

Letourneau played two games with the United States Hockey League’s Sioux Falls Stampede after his prep season ended and was expected to play with the club in the fall. Instead, he received a call from Boston College coach Greg Brown and will lace up his skates for the Eagles a year earlier than expected. The move came after BC star Will Smith signed an entry-level contract with the San Jose Sharks in late May.

“I guess just making plays,” Letourneau said when asked about his strengths. “I just look for whatever plays there. It might be flashy, it might not be, I don’t know. I see whatever’s there and then I kind of make it happen. It just kind of looks good [because] I’m a big centerman [and] I can stickhandle.”

A lot of Letourneau’s skill comes from a strong foundation. His father, Jeff, played college hockey, and his mother, Vicki Wilson, was a talented basketball player. The younger Letourneau also plays lacrosse — he is a long-stick midfielder, focusing more on defense. So, maybe that’s how he developed his 200-foot game?

“I think he’s a skilled centerman. I see him, even though he scored a good amount of goals, I think playmaking and his ability to get other people involved in the play is a real strength of his,” said St. Andrew’s coach David Manning. “He’s got a great shot and has the ability to finish, but his ability to connect with his teammates and get others involved, and draw attention and open up opportunities is probably what I see as a real strength. He identifies as a big-scoring center. Will that be who he is at the highest levels? For his sake, he’s going to have to evolve to a certain degree and he’s more than willing to accept that and do that.”

Manning also credits a lot of Letourneau’s game to his athleticism. Though he had to work with Letourneau to use his height to his advantage — while also playing a penalty-free physical game with his elbow at the same height as other guys’ heads.

“He had to manage that and that’s definitely a real consideration when you think of a player who everyone wants to be more physical,” Manning said. “The big thing for us was actually, he doesn’t play like a typical big player. So my goal for him, as we went through our two years together, was to help him get on the path to play like a bigger player and utilize his massive size advantage in his reach and his leverage. So, trying to add pieces to his game, for instance, being a little bit better on the boards, especially in the offensive end and behind the net. … So he went from being just that skilled forward to adding into that skilled power type of forward.

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“Big players tend to be able to leverage and create offense with players at their back and I think that was one area where Dean didn’t understand how big he was, didn’t understand how to use his size and his reach. So that was one area, over our time, was just to help him kind of understand what those situations were, how to create them more often, and that way utilize what will become one of his biggest advantages, which is his size differential.”

Where Letourneau lands is obviously to be determined, but if you ask The Athletic’s senior NHL prospects writer Corey Pronman, there’s a good chance it’s a team that wears orange.

“He’s got a ton of talent,” he said at the NHL Scouting Combine. “And I think a team that has two first-round picks, he could be a guy that teams could gamble on.”