"There is something about him that speaks to him having an internal fire about him," said Hayley Wickenheiser, Maple Leafs assistant general manager of player development. "The odds of being a smaller player, playing Junior-B, getting drafted higher than maybe people would have thought. He's a very modest kid, a farm boy and obviously a lot of credit to make the London Knights as a 17-year-old, to kill penalties and to play the amount of important minutes that he did by the end of the season. ... He's a player we really like and he's someone who is easy to work with and open to coaching."