Film Room: Dean Letourneau's size and skill make him worth a first-round gamble in 2024 NHL Draft

In a game built upon tools, sense, and physical advantages, you can’t blame executives, coaches, and fans alike who marvel at players who possess attributes that differ from the norm. There is an obsession over height in hockey because, at the end of the day, it does matter.

That’s why NHL organizations take notice when 6-foot-7 centre prospects produce the way Dean Letourneau did with St. Andrew's College.

Across 70 triple-A and Prep Hockey Conference games, the Ontario product scored 75 goals and added 77 assists, good for more than two points per game. Setting school scoring records is one thing; how he did it was another entirely.

Typically, taller players have to overcome a mountain of physical hurdles at this age. Growth spurts during inopportune times often ruin stride mechanics, limit upper-body movement, and create thin frames that require a tonne of work to add to.

Much of the development work is focused on recapturing movement and operating more freely. In turn, the hope is you can get taller players to a point where they can leverage size mismatches, all while blending enough skill to obtain an NHL projection.

What makes Letourneau atypical is the lack of the aforementioned limitations. A coordinated, toolsy, and smart attacker, he’s a unicorn who crushed his competition this season in almost every way possible.

It doesn’t take a large logical leap to understand why many have serious reservations about Letourneau’s production and offensive upside though. With only two games outside the preparatory hockey circuit, there isn’t a real sample of what Letourneau is as a hockey player against better competition.

Without that, you have to fall back on what typically makes players successful, particularly if they come from leagues where they are clearly the class of the field.