CRANBERRY, Pa. -- Usually if a player has a four-point performance in a game, he's going to be the story of the game.
It's pretty hard to upstage that, but that's what forward prospect Nathan Legare did in the Penguins' game in the Prospects Challenge in Buffalo last week.
Defense prospect Colin Swoyer racked up the points in that 6-4 win over the Bruins' prospects, quarterbacking the power play and setting up four goals on the man advantage in the win.
Legare played the role of the agitator that night, and was a frequent target of the Bruins' players' abuse. He got under their skin, and it paid off. While he spent some time in the penalty box himself throughout the game, he also managed to draw four penalties, and the Penguins capitalized on more than one of the ensuing power plays.
Mike Sullivan made the trip to Buffalo that day to see the prospects in game action, and he liked what he saw.
"He was trying to make an impression, that's for sure," Sullivan told me. "You know, he was getting under the skin of the opponent, he has that dimension to his game. He's competing hard, and you can see it each and every day. He brings a ton of enthusiasm to the rink every day, he loves to play. You can see that passion in his game. I think that's when players are at their best. I think Nathan's given himself every opportunity to maximize what he has here."
Legare's rookie professional season didn't go as smoothly as he had hoped. He was a healthy scratch for a game in January for what head coach J.D. Forrest called "repetitive mistakes," and was again a healthy scratch more often than not for the last month or so of the season. He wasn't making good decisions with the puck, he was a liability defensively at times, and he really wasn't producing offensively the way the team had hoped. He finished the year with seven goals and nine assists in 57 games.
I asked Legare if the adjustment to the professional game was more difficult than he had anticipated, and he said that was an accurate assessment.
"It's different," he said. "You try to imagine it a little bit, but it's different. It took me a couple of games to just adjust myself to play with men now. It's pretty different than junior. But I learned a lot, and I think it's going to be a great year for me."
Legare called his rookie year a "year of process." He relied more on his offensive game in juniors, having produced at over a point-per-game pace over the last three years. The points don't come as easily at the AHL level, and if he's going to crack Pittsburgh's lineup it's going to be in a bottom-six role. He needed to learn how to be a player with a better defensive game, with some grit and physicality too. He said that in junior he relied a lot on opponents making mistakes and capitalizing on turnovers. Once he turned pro, he learned that the players make far fewer mistakes, "guys are more dedicated," and that he got fewer bounces going his way. He needed to learn how to more effectively make things happen himself.
"It was kind of a hard season, a different role," he said. "It's an adjustment, but I think I grew a lot as a man, but also as a hockey player. So that's a good thing. I'm proud of myself. That year is behind me."
While being scratched wasn't ideal, he tried to take the positives out of it. He said that it did help him to just watch the games from a different perspective, and sitting up in the stands also served as some added motivation. He had -- and still has -- a great attitude about it all.
"It was great for me," he said of that experience. "I took it like a man. Sometimes it's a hard pill to swallow, but I think it's part of the process. A lot of guys have been through that and now they're in the NHL, they play 1,000 games and stuff like that. So I try to motivate myself with that and I think that's my mindset this year."
That first taste of pro hockey gave Legare a good idea of what he needed to work on over the summer. He said the area of his game in which he really wanted to make the biggest improvement was "obviously his skating." He worked with Pascal Daoust, a power skating coach who was also the general manager of Legare's QMJHL team in Val-d'Or. He has two skills coaches in the offseason, and one of the big things he worked on with them was trying to create more space for himself in the corners.
Legare doesn't want to set any specific goals for himself this coming season. He's not setting any targets for his offensive production, he's not thinking about an NHL call up just yet. He just wants to get better.
"I want to work hard every day and just have fun every day at the rink," he said. "Last year was part of the process. When you know you're not going to be in the lineup, it's hard to be very happy when you go to the rink. But you try to always get positive, get better every day."
