Letourneau making sizable impression heading into 2024 NHL Draft

The 2024 Upper Deck NHL Draft will be held June 28-29 at Sphere in Las Vegas. The first round will be June 28 (7 p.m. ET; ESPN, ESPN+, SN, TVAS) and Rounds 2-7 are June 29 (11:30 a.m. ET; ESPN+, NHLN, SN, SN1). NHL.com is counting down to the draft with in-depth profiles on top prospects, podcasts and other features. Today, a profile on St. Andrew's College forward Dean Letourneau. NHL.com's full draft coverage can be found here.

Dean Letourneau is tough to overlook on or off the ice, even playing at St. Andrew's College, a prep school in Aurora, Ontario.

It's not the usual path for player with NHL aspirations, but at 6-foot-6, 214 pounds, Letourneau is not the usual top draft prospect.

"St. Andrew's has a great track record of guys getting drafted into the NHL and playing in the NHL," the 18-year-old center said. "So I didn't really think that was going to be an issue there."

Letourneau was selected by Owen Sound of the Ontario Hockey League in the ninth round (No. 174) of the 2022 OHL draft, but opted for prep school.

"I had always wanted to play in the OHL growing up," he said. "I had wanted to play as a 16-year-old. But when I went to St. Andrew's and saw a lot of guys that played [Division I hockey] and what their careers looked like, I gave it up pretty quick."

Three players have been selected in the draft from St. Andrew's the previous two years, but none earlier than the third round. The hockey and education opportunities were too much for Letourneau to pass on, though.

"The development I had there was unlike any other," he said. "I was playing 20-plus minutes a night, I was playing power play, penalty kill. I was playing in all different situations that I might come to down the road. The coaching staff there was really great, and the schooling, the education was a big part for me and my family. So the fact that I could have a great education while also getting great hockey was a sealed deal for me there."

Letourneau led St. Andrew's with 127 points (61 goals, 66 assists) in 56 games this season, including a league-best 25 points (14 goals, 11 assists) in 14 games in the Prep Hockey Conference.

He's No. 23 in NHL Central Scouting's final ranking of North American skaters for the 2024 draft.

"He’s very intriguing to me, has a ton of potential and could have a really high ceiling," Central Scouting's Nick Smith said. "I think it’s hard to find a player with his size and length to have soft hands and good feet. He can make plays with sense and vision with a scoring touch around the net. He still has a ton of filling out to do as well."

Assessing Letourneau relative to other prospects in his peer group, however, is challenging.

"Not only is it difficult for our group, it's difficult for the 32 clubs as well," Central Scouting director Dan Marr said. "We saw him play last year and we'd seen St. Andrew's quite a bit so all our full-time scouts saw him play last year, we saw him play this year, and we got a look at him playing two games with Sioux Falls (United States Hockey League) during the Christmas break.

"We've seen this before where high school and prep school players go and play a couple games in the USHL and they look a little lost. So there you can get a little glimpse of a comparison. But what we were pleased to see was that Letourneau with Sioux Falls, he was really on top of the play, he was reading the play, he was moving, he was in good position. ... Defensively he backchecked with a purpose, he was in the right place at the right time, on top of the play.

"He's got size, he can skate, he's got pretty good hockey sense. The numbers, they're a little off the charts and you can't compare apples to oranges ... all we know is he knows how to get open and get those scoring chances."

Besides his size, Letourneau's biggest asset is his athleticism. In addition to hockey, he played soccer, basketball, tennis, volleyball and lacrosse growing up. And his mother, Vicki Wilson, was a two-time All-Canadian basketball player at Queen's University.

"He moves really well for a big guy," St. Andrew's coach David Manning said. "His skating and his agility and his explosiveness are all very different for a bigger guy like him. ... I think he's going to shock a lot of people with his athleticism. He's not your typical big, lanky guy.

"His athleticism is probably a little bit unknown. You watch him, you see it in his skating ability, he's got good agility, he turns well, there's no awkwardness to how he moves. He is long but there's no awkwardness to him. He's very athletic."

And though Letourneau might not have been tested by the traditional OHL powers, he did face pressure as a leading scoring counted on to be a big-time player.

"He had lots of success, you can't deny that, but he had to work and push," Manning said. "He was pushed with our schedule, even though he was able to produce at a pretty great clip the entire year through, it wasn't like it came easy.

"I think the big thing, though, is Dean is massively driven and competitive as an athlete himself. He's self-motivated and he wanted to achieve at a high level. Never really rested or coasting or going about things the wrong way. He's got that internal motivation, that competitiveness, that drive to be the best player he can be, and that really fueled him continue to push himself all season long."

Letourneau intended to play at Sioux Falls next season, then play at Boston College in 2025-26. But with Will Smith, the No. 4 pick of the 2023 NHL Draft, signing with the San Jose Sharks on May 28, Letourneau will play NCAA hockey next season instead.

The goal before the college hockey season starts will be to add muscle to his frame, which would allow him to play more like one of his favorite NHL players, Buffalo Sabres center Tage Thompson (6-6, 220), who was 6-5, 195 pounds when the St. Louis Blues selected him with the No. 26 pick in the 2016 NHL Draft.

"I try to model my game after Tage Thompson," Letourneau said. "Just a big, tall centerman with skill. I love watching his puck protection and the way he uses his body to shield defenders. That's something I'm trying to incorporate into my game, too."

"Potential" is the word Manning uses often when describing Letourneau, and it's what NHL teams will have to determine when it comes to deciding whether to select him.

"I think there's more of an openness and willingness for the NHL clubs to scour players at every level," Marr said. "They're not going to let the fact that he's playing at a prep school in Ontario inhibit their thought process on what the prospect might be like three, four, five years down the road."