Thirty minutes prior to Friday night’s Rookie Camp scrimmage Drummondville, Quebec native Matheiu Perreault could be seen standing behind the players’ benches, not yet in gear, twirling his hockey stick with a puck seemingly taped to his blade. I say seemingly because over the course of four or five minutes the puck never ever moved from the center of the blade curve. He’d whirl his stick with rapid wrist action, rapid eye movement motion almost, and never lose control of his prized possession. For a few brief seconds it appeared as if the puck defied gravity with the blade curved toward the floor. It was a magical spectacle.
Out on the ice this week there has been a similar attachment of puck to Perreault’s stick. An emerging storyline this week, he has freshly impressed Capitals’ officials with his playmaking ability, his elite hockey sense, and particularly his knack for being in the right place at the right time in tight quarters. A player of modest stature (5 ‘8, 160-ish), Perreault shows no reluctance to go where the big bodies bang.
A year ago at this time most in hockey would have thought Perreault lucky even to be invited to the Caps’ Rookie camp this summer. His rookie year in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League with the Acadie Bathurst Titan was nice but unspectacular (18 goals, 34 assists in 62 games). His offensive production did jump a bit that postseason, but come June and the NHL Entry Draft, his size kept him on the board late. The Caps grabbed him in round six, 177th overall.
But as the final leaves were falling from trees this past autumn a strange thing was taking place back up in Acadie Bathurst: Perreault was a dominating offensive force night in and night out. He was named Q League Player of the Month for November. By Thanksgiving (ours), he’d passed his rookie year points total. Along with draft classmate Francois Bouchard he was invited to the Canadian World Junior Final Evaluation Camp in December. In midseason Caps’ General Manager George McPhee went on the CapsReport and told Mike Vogel that Perreault had received “the highest possible score” on a player’s hockey sense. He finished the 2006-07 season with 41 goals and 78 assists in 67 games, and he capped it off by winning the league’s MVP award.
He arrived in Washington for the first time this week (”It’s hot here” he complained to me), and from the opening moments of Wednesday’s opening scrimmage he displayed an elite game of deft playmaking, unrivaled puck control, and superb instincts. He scored two goals that night, and he sent flat accurate passes to teammates in every scoring sector.
Along the boards, where you might think him most vulnerable and overmatched, he actually excels, drawing defenders to him to create open space for his linemates. He wins most of his draws, many quite cleanly. He is in constant motion in the offensive zone.
But outlandish offensive numbers and hardware almost as tall as he is bear no relationship to Perreault’s shy and soft-spoken demeanor off the ice. He was frank in acknowledging how even he had no idea he was in store for an MVP quality CHL season.
He told me that last season was so spectacular that he is at pains to identify specific goals to better this season. Instead, he will focus on “improving my strength, [gaining] more speed . . . more speed.”
From McPhee’s midseason assessment to this week’s dynamic display I made a point of trying to press the GM for a bold forecast for Perreault. I didn’t want to know if McPhee thought Perreault simply NHL-destined but rather if once there he’d be an impact player.
“He’s a good player,” McPhee told me after Friday’s scrimmage. But what about an impact NHLer? “I wouldn’t be surprised at all,” he added.
NHL hockey will always have places for the undersized and overskilled and determined. Martin St. Louis or Steve Sullivan or Daniel Briere would score goals in any era. It’s too early yet to tell if Perreault’s on that kind of development arc, but he possesses in abundance hockey’s most coveted quality — game-dictating instincts and skills.
