Letourneau leans on first-year lessons, eyes step forward in sophomore stage

Dean Letourneau’s athletic background has been anything but normal, and his journey to BC has followed suit. Considering Letourneau was the first skater since Columbus Blue Jackets forward Miles Wood to arrive on campus straight out of prep hockey, there were always going to be question marks. Then, when you add Letourneau’s lengthy frame onto a last-minute call-up to the NCAA, you have an even more interesting scenario.

However, Letourneau is no fish out of water to outside the norm. The rising 6’7″ sophomore from Ontario experienced an athletic upbringing that took a handful of wild turns. In a recent interview by Evan Marinofsky of The New England Hockey Journal, the duo discussed a variety of those steps and more. “I probably started skating when I was two, and then I played a bunch of other sports growing up, like volleyball and basketball,” Letourneau told Marinofsky. “That’s rare, like most hockey kids have never played basketball and vice versa.”

In BC’s case, fans are used to having a consistently poor basketball program. Thus, it wasn’t ridiculous to envision a lengthy Letourneau lacing up the basketball shoes for a game with BC hoops. After all, skating isn’t easy for someone of Letourneau’s size, let alone playing NCAA hockey as a growing 18-year-old kid at the time. That mobility allowed Letourneau to light it up for St. Andrew’s College on the U18 AAA prep circuit, collecting a whopping 127 points in 56 games played in 2023-24. Yet it was anything but smooth sailing to reach that level. 

Given Letourneau’s age and stature at the time, he experienced hurdles that smaller skaters tend to avoid. Luckily, his success to that point caught the attention of Shelly Kettle, skating coach for the NHL’s Ottawa Senators. “When you keep growing, you kind of have to, not relearn how to skate, but you get taller, so it’s kind of a little more awkward. So every summer, I’d spend a bunch of time with [Kettle] on the ice, and I’d have to kind of rework my stride every single year,” Letourneau said. “It kind of felt like I was learning all over again, but now it’s finally kind of stopped, and I could just maintain it and keep working on it to relearn new things.”

Before, during, and after that special season with St. Andrew’s College, Letourneau kept growing. All the while, he gained the attention of college scouts, none of whom Letourneau knew about at the time. At this point, he had to take things in and out of the rink into consideration. Ironically, Letourneau didn’t see any future success on the horizon until after the fact: he was picked in the late rounds by the OHL’s Owen Sound Attack, and never considered a move to college hockey before getting to St. Andrew’s College. “I never honestly knew anything about college hockey,” Letourneau said. “It was always kind of like the OHL, that’s where I wanted to play. I was with St. Andrew’s at the time, but then kind of looking more into the college aspect, that’s when teams started to reach out, and I started to realize how good of an opportunity it would be.”

Given his large frame and the need for more time to develop, Letourneau saw the NCAA as the perfect setting for that middle step en route to an ideal career in the NHL. There, Letourneau could take up to four years to acclimate to bigger and better opponents. “You know, bigger players tend to take a little longer to develop, so college kind of gave me that extra runway if I needed to,” Letourneau said. “You have a longer timeline if you need it, and it just kind of caught my eye, and I wanted to go down that road.” It all came together as a blessing in disguise for Letourneau, as a potential move to the OHL would have made him ineligible for the NCAA when he was about to make his decision. 

Speaking of decisions, Letourneau made a late shift in his NCAA journey, separating from Northeastern and committing to the Eagles in the fall of 2023. From there, the connection with the city of Boston was just getting started as Letourneau was selected 25th overall by the hometown Boston Bruins last summer in the 2024 NHL Draft. Ironically, the Bruins made a late pick swap with his hometown Ottawa Senators, giving Letourneau the chance to get acclimated with the city of Boston before many of his peers. “I had a couple Zoom meetings with [Boston], so I talked to them a fair amount, but it never kind of caught on my radar that I could be drafted,” Letourneau said. “It was just such a cool experience. I’m super stoked about that.”

After a late rise in draft stock that had him picked in the first round of the selection process, Letourneau experienced another career jump that was even more unexpected. When former Eagle forward Will Smith made the late decision to sign with the San Jose Sharks, it left a gaping hole down the middle of BC’s lineup for 2024-25, leaving Greg Brown with a last-minute decision to make. From there, Brown contacted Letourneau about making the immediate step into college hockey, and at that point, Letourneau had plans to play for the USHL’s Sioux Falls Stampede for that season.

Long story short, Letourneau had to adjust his interview preparation on the fly at the 2024 NHL Draft Combine. “I already had half my interviews, and I told all those teams I was going to Sioux Falls, and then I get a call from Coach Brown at BC, and he’s asking me if I want to come in, and I mean it’s kind of hard to turn that down,” Letourneau said. “Then I told the second half of teams I was going to BC.”

On that note, being drafted by an original six team down the street from your university comes with curses just as it does blessings. The common overlap between Bruins and Eagles fans yielded expectations that were likely unrealistic for the freshman forward at the time. Specifically, a lack of consistent point production from Letourneau in his freshman season met with natural backlash from fans. Arguably, those criticisms originated from his pedigree and the team that drafted him. If he had been selected one pick earlier by the Utah Mammoth in a smaller market, that story might have been different.

Nevertheless, Letourneau knows he struggled in his first year of college hockey; yet he doesn’t want to let the cloud of three points in 36 games played block his view of success. “It’s just kind of knowing my own abilities and knowing what I’m capable of,” Letourneau said. “Just trying not to stay focused on the outside world and what they’re saying on social media. I know what I’m capable of and what I’m able to do.”

From here, Letourneau is going to use his freshman season as fuel for his foreseeable future at BC. Though the former freshman entered college hockey ahead of schedule, he was able to learn a lot from his time on the third and fourth lines. “It was definitely a little tough adjusting to a role that you’ve never been put into like that,” Letourneau said. “I needed to get faster, stronger, and stuff like that. So I put in a good year of learning those skills which is going to help me going into my sophomore year where I can add that offensive side back into it and then I’ll have a complete game there.”

On previous occasions, head coach Greg Brown has compared Letourneau to former Eagle and all-American forward Brian Boyle at this stage of their careers. Similar to Letourneau, Boyle struggled out of the gates at BC, logging only eight points in his freshman season before collecting nearly 30 the year after and 50 plus the following years. No one’s saying that Letourneau has to be Brian Boyle, but the opportunity to improve is up for grabs, and the means to do so are right there. As is evident, BC’s lack of forward depth will give Letourneau every opportunity to get better, opening up more chances for him to be creative and confident with the puck on his stick.

So, the next time Eagles fans project Letourneau’s name loudly through the rafters of Conte Forum, it will likely be after the rising sophomore finds his first goal instead of finding the puck. Well, maybe the puck to start with…