Tommy Bleyl surpassed expectations during a breakthrough draft year – even his own.
“Coming in, I had expectations and they were a little bit setting the bar low for myself, I guess, looking back,” the Moncton Wildcats defenceman said. “I started to exceed those expectations over and over again and then, throughout the course of the season, it got more and more exciting and more and more possible.”
An undrafted free agent, Bleyl racked up an eye-popping 81 points in 63 games en route to being named the best defenceman in the Quebec Maritime Junior Hockey League and the top rookie in the entire Canadian Hockey League.
Not bad for a kid who was playing prep hockey at Cushing Academy in Massachusetts one year ago. What were his initial expectations in making the jump to major junior hockey?
“Just come in and establish a pretty good role in the team,” the 18-year-old from Glenville, N.Y. said. “Just get drafted, no matter the round, and put up a couple points and impress a lot of people.”
A lot of people are certainly impressed, including TSN Director of Scouting Craig Button, who has Bleyl going 14th overall to the Columbus Blue Jackets in his final mock draft.
It now seems likely that Bleyl, a right shot who stands 5-foot-11, 165 pounds, will hear his name called in the first round of the NHL Draft on Friday in Buffalo although he’s not getting ahead of himself.
“I’m hoping I can go in the 20s,” Bleyl said. “That’d really be a dream come true. It’s changed a lot throughout the season, my expectations with the draft, and it’s still pretty tough because you don’t know. I could easily fall to the second round, but I’ve talked to a lot of the teams in the 20s. No matter where I go, I’ll be extremely happy and honoured to play for any organization.”
During a conversation with TSN, Bleyl reflected on his rapid rise this season and explained why Montreal Canadiens defenceman Mike Matheson is a role model. He also shared how he became such a smooth skater. The following is an edited transcript of the interview.
TSN: What allowed you to surpass even your own expectations this year?
Bleyl: My teammates. My coaches. It was a combination of a lot of things and a lot of people that really helped that. Going into the season, I was confident coming off of a great summer of training back at home and then it took a lot of things to go right. I established a role in the team. Another thing is my teammates immediately took me in. I felt like one of the boys after a couple days. My billets really helped me adjust as well. I have excellent billets. My coaches allowed me to come in and seize that window of opportunity that was available. And, yeah, obviously my parents, they were always there for me and supported me throughout the entire season. And then the Moncton owner, Mr. Irving, he also really helped. He was always there in the locker room and had an excellent energy to him and always motivated us.
TSN: Where do you feel like you improved the most?
Bleyl: My defensive ability and defensive game improved the most. There were a lot of gaping holes at the beginning of the season. I wasn’t aware they were there coming out of prep, and then my defensive coach, Mikaël Tam, he put a finger on a lot of those immediately. We started to shore them up throughout the course of the season. I had to overhaul my defensive game a little bit to be able to hang with the high-level forwards in the Q, and we were able to get a lot of that done. It was a work in progress. It was really nice for me and my D partner to be able to match up against a lot of the other teams’ top lines and be really effective against them. I give a lot of credit to Adam Fortier-Gendron, I don’t know how to really pronounce his last name. I just call him ‘Forts.’ I give a lot of credit to him. He’s a really, really solid and consistent defender and he has some very offensive flashes as well. Our games complement each other really well.
TSN: What did you shore up defensively?
Bleyl: Positioning stuff like boxing out, corner battles, when to pick up a guy and then stick detail was another thing. I needed to shore that up a little bit. And my gap was another thing, you know, having a tighter gap through the neutral zone and trusting my skating backwards and closing plays quicker. There were a lot of little things like that that I needed to improve on to be effective defensively and there’s still a lot of room for improvement. Obviously, there’s so many more things that I can do to unlock better parts of my defensive game that I’m still working on.
TSN: What allowed you to pile up so many points?
Bleyl: Like I said before, having great teammates surrounding me is a huge part of it. It was awesome being able to create plays with those players and make really high-level plays and being able to kind of read each other’s minds in a way a little bit on the power play especially, but 5-on-5 as well. With Caleb Desnoyers, a lot of it went through him, a lot of it went through Gabe Smith, Teddy Mutryn, my D partner Forts, and just plenty of excellent forwards and excellent talent on our team. Also confidence was a huge part of it. Going into the season I didn’t have that much confidence and then I slowly started to get confidence throughout the course of the season and just went from there. That’s the key part. As long as you have confidence, anything can happen.
TSN: How did you get through some of the times before this season when you weren’t as confident?
Bleyl: It’s a lot of mental toughness. There’s a lot of psychological components that go into it, and specific techniques work for different people. There’s stuff like visualizing the game, going over film if it’s a bad game, and then trying not to get into a drought with confidence. That’s the main thing, because as long as you don’t spiral downward with no confidence then you’ll be fine. and you’ll be able to bounce back.
TSN: What was your favourite moment with Moncton head coach and master motivator Gardiner MacDougall?
Bleyl: When I won the rookie of the year he gave a little speech in the locker room and it was awesome to hear. He expressed that he was really proud of me and I really appreciated that. He’s seriously an excellent coach. Everything he does, it’s to motivate the kids and bring out the competitive spirit. Another thing I love is he would always create little mini-games around the rink to keep our competitive spirit going throughout the course of the long season. Another thing I love about him is the bar is extremely high no matter what. He could have not the best team in front of him, but he’d push them to be the best they could be and he just happens to have [general manager and son] Taylor MacDougall to bring the high-calibre players to him that he’s gonna work really well with.
TSN: You’re considered among the top skaters in this year’s draft. How did you develop that skill?
Bleyl: A ton of hours of hard work. I started skating at a really young age, at three years old. Around when I was five or six I started going to this guy named Dave Randall. He has a company called North American Hockey Systems in upstate New York and he trains younger players. He also trains older players as well, but when I was younger he had a really high-level younger skating session and I was with him for about 10 years. He conducts his practices in a pretty small rink, which requires you to use deep edges to be able to maneuver. I was skating there for a really long time.
TSN: What first inspired you to get on the ice?
Bleyl: My sister, actually. She had a knack for skating as well. She did high-level figure skating as a kid. She quit when she was 13 because she got too tall to be a competitive figure skater. She was like 5′8 when she quit and was dealing with some injury stuff. But she actually got me into skating. She’s two years older than me and I always loved to do everything she did. Whenever she skated, I skated. It just kind of came naturally to me and I loved every single moment of it. And then at one learn-to-skate session I saw a Schenectady Chargers practice. I looked through the glass to watch it and I told my dad, ‘I need to do that.’
TSN: Who is your NHL role model?
Bleyl: Right now I would say Mike Matheson is a really good one, especially as my defensive game is improving. It used to be Quinn Hughes and more offensively focused. Watching him play in the NHL, it’s really awesome to see how offensively gifted and talented he is. He’s a really inspiring player. So, he’s definitely one of my player comparables, but then I also love to value my defensive side of the game and Mike Matheson is one of those guys that uses his body and in the D-zone uses his feet to break the puck out. We kind of have similar skill sets and he seems like the type of player that I could turn into in three or four years.
TSN: You interviewed with 30 teams at the combine. What was that like?
Bleyl: It was really cool being able to meet all the scouts and some of the GMs for the teams. They all had really unique questions to ask, some more unique than others. It was really awesome to be able to meet them and see all those familiar faces that I see on TV.
TSN: What was the most unique question?
Bleyl: The one that was most difficult to answer was Montreal’s. They said it’s the night before a game and your roommate goes out to a bar at midnight and comes back at 3 a.m. really drunk and then he’s like, ‘Don’t tell anybody.’ And then you have a team meeting the next morning at 8 a.m. and Marty St. Louis asks you in front of the entire team, ‘Did you see him come back at 3 a.m. or not?’ What do you do in that situation? I, honestly, had to take a good two minutes to think about it. I said I would just tell him, ‘I don’t know. I was asleep.’ It was pretty funny. It was an awkward question. I think the meaning of the question is to know that, either decision you make, you are screwed. It’s obviously an unrealistic situation, but it was a fun question to answer.
TSN: How did the interview with your favourite team growing up, the New York Rangers, go?
Bleyl: It went really well. I got to meet Chris Drury and just seeing all those guys in the room together, I mean, it’s kind of like a dream come true being able to talk to them. It’s a little bit of an out-of-body moment. Like, ‘Am I really living in this life?’ Like, ‘Is this really me?’ It’s awesome. It’s really inspiring and if I could tell my younger self that I was in that room at that moment, he would just be absolutely shocked and speechless. So, yeah, I was really, really excited.
TSN: Any other pinch-me moments?
Bleyl: Meeting [Blue Jackets director of player personnel] Rick Nash, who was in the Columbus meeting. He was my favourite player growing up. It’s, like, ‘Wow!’ Never really expected that, honestly, until he’s like standing right in front of you. It was exactly how you put it: a pinch-me moment.
TSN: Why was Nash your favourite player?
Bleyl: He had a similar story to me. He grew up pretty undersized and then obviously now he’s 6′4, so he’s a giant. Once he grew he became really successful. I actually used to be a forward before I switched to defence, so he was one of those guys that was always kind of an inspirational story. He always kept me from giving up. The idea of his career was keeping me from giving up through moments of really hard adversity.
TSN: We’re days away from the draft, how are you feeling now that it’s so close?
Bleyl: The nerves are setting in for sure. It’s something that’s natural with every single prospect. Where am I gonna go? What team am I gonna get drafted to? Am I even gonna get drafted? Sometimes you think of the worst-case scenario. But, you know, it’s mostly just excitement. I can’t wait for my family to all come out and spend those days with them and see a lot of coaches. Gardiner and Taylor MacDougall are gonna be there and Dave Randall is gonna be there with other local coaches, so it’s gonna be awesome. It’s gonna be an excellent experience. I’m just gonna try to make the most of it and make as many memories as I can.
TSN: What song have you picked to play when you’re drafted?
Bleyl: ‘Viva la Vida’ from Coldplay. It’s a song I love. It’s just inspirational and I love the beat too. I mean, you give it a listen and it sounds like a perfect song to play when you’re having a great experience in a great moment.
TSN: What’s the next step for you as you get set to return to Moncton next season?
Bleyl: It’s mostly just about developing and rounding out my game. I got a little taste of being successful defensively, but it’s more about being able to utilize my new weight, my new strength and learn how to hit, learn how to play more of a physically imposing game, which is something that I wasn’t really able to do this year. At the beginning of the year I lacked confidence. Towards the end of the year, I needed more weight, but I actually was able to start, using my body in those situations. It’s a work in progress. So going into next season I’m gonna hopefully be 175, which is 15 pounds heavier than I was going into Moncton last year. So, I’ll be 15 pounds heavier. I’ll be more confident in the league and then I’ll be able to round out my defensive game and get another pro-style season under my belt and play a leadership role in Moncton.
TSN: What’s your strategy to put on weight?
Bleyl:I have a pretty nice strategy. First of all, I mean, my mom, she makes great home-cooked meals and my grandmother as well. They cook meals that are healthy and nutritious, so I’ll eat as much as I can there. And then after a tough skate or a tough workout, I’ll try to hit up Chipotle to get a nice steak bowl. Yeah, it’s a good system. Protein shakes are part of it. It’s a lot of the same with what I’ve been doing throughout the past couple years, but now it’s just kind of taking a step up and obviously hitting the weights heavy in the weight room to
