On Frozen Blog

The hockey crowd in Hershey has had good sport with me over the past couple of years with my exuberance over some Caps’ hockey prospects. This is a chief symptom of the DraftGeek. I’d only watched Andrew Gordon’s games at St. Cloud St. on television (but, three-years’ worth!); I saw even less of Mathieu Perreault (no TV), but I devoured online coverage of his feats in the Q, and of course watched as much of him and others prospects at Development and Rookie camps as I could the past couple of seasons. I’m no hockey scout, but I think I know a special young hockey player when I see one, and in the cases of Gordon and Perreault, I kept telling my friends in Hershey the past couple of years — these guys are gonna help you, mark my words.
Gordon is in his first full season with Hershey, having apprenticed in South Carolina with the Stingrays for a healthy chunk of last autumn. He is this season a front-line forward counted upon to be an impact player in both ends of the rink. Today there are few regular observers of the Bears (as in none) who believe he won’t enjoy an NHL career as a two-way guy who’ll be great in the room. And for what it’s worth, he’s great to talk to.
I know there are many in old media who don’t regard the apprentice period of hockey prospects all that newsworthy (their editors even less so), all that worthy of coverage travel and filing, but I enjoy every single dialogue I have with Caps’ kids like these two. And I learn something about them and the game and their development arcs from every one of the encounters.
Mathieu Perreault and Andrew Gordon just seem to enjoy answering development-related questions, and simply talking hockey, and more than the insights they offer, which almost always bear interesting reflection, I enjoy the enthusiasm they both offer just talking puck, just sharing what is irrefutable joy at being where they are in their respective hockey careers. I wish more in media would seek stories off hockey’s well-beaten path.
Perreault the AHL rookie is struggling with his adjustment to the bigger, faster professional league in the sense that he isn’t averaging two points a game — he is averaging one. Six games played, six points tallied, and skating +2, on a Bears’ fourth line (alongside Oskar Osala and Francois Bouchard) that is fourth line in name only. I asked Mathieu if even on the heels of a strong training camp in Washington last month he expected such success so early in the world’s third-best hockey league.
“Not really, Woodie give us young guys confidence, he put us a lot out on the ice, and the success we have, he reward us, and I think that is good for my confidence,” he told me last weekend after the Bears’ home opener, a 7-1 mauling of Syracuse.
Perreault and his fellow rookie linemates Osala and Bouchard engineered the game-tying goal deep in the third period on the road in Philadelphia last Friday night, helping the Bears sweep all four road games to start the new season.
Consider that the all-rookie line obviously is still adjusting to the new, tougher, faster league, and becoming accustomed to playing on a line together. As effective as they already are, they’re going to get better. Meanwhile, potentially all season long Coach Bob Woods gets to roll four effective lines every game, which necessarily will make the Bears fresher on those third games of the weekend on Sundays.
“We’re not like a fourth line like other teams have, we’re just young guys trying to get experience and learn from the veterans. There are a lot of good veterans here.”
Coach Woods is even entrusting penalty killing duty to his rookie from the Quebec League. And why not? Perreault killed penalties last season for Acadie Bathurst in the Q, he’s gone all out for his new coach this fall, and so he’s been rewarded for it.
“It’s good for me when Woodie has that confidence in me,” Perreault noted.
“I wanted to come here and be good in all situations.”
Perreault got great feedback from the Caps at the end of his run at training camp last month, and he wanted me to know that the evaluation included an acknowledgment that if he continued his strong play in Hershey he could be called up to the parent club in the 2008-09 season.
“They say I’m a ‘hell of a pick’ because I’m a sixth round selection,” he said with a broad smile.