It’s noon on April 3, and just a week removed from a second shoulder surgery, Maveric Lamoureux is laughing on a phone call from his home in Quebec.
“It’s my other shoulder now!” he says, chuckling. “I keep saying that I’ll be Robocop after this!”
He has just returned from what he didn’t realize was his last trip to Arizona preceding the team’s move to Utah, his season with the QMJHL-favorite Drummondville Voltigeurs now over. He’ll spend some time at home before rejoining his team, who he’ll follow from the stands once they return from a road trip to Saint John.
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It’s another six-month setback in the development of one of hockey’s most unique players — a towering 6-foot-7, right-shot defenseman with natural mobility and a mean streak on the ice that contrasts against his famously infectious and upbeat personality.
He’s undeterred by the latest development in a series of them — this surgery following a month-long absence with mononucleosis after he’d returned from representing Canada at the world juniors (where he averaged 24 minutes a night, led the team in plus-minus, and was named one of the team’s top three players for it). “It’s not fun,” he says of the injury, pointing out that it was a Wednesday game against the worst team in the league.
But he’s not wallowing. On the contrary, he’s treating it as a positive. Though he’s disappointed that he won’t be able to pursue a Memorial Cup with his teammates, he’s quick to point out that the six-month mark lines up with rookie tournament timing. This surgery wasn’t as intrusive as the other shoulder’s either, he says, so he’s hopeful he can get back in closer to four months than six.
Before the Coyotes’ move, he was committed to spending the summer in Arizona (he will likely now spend it in Salt Lake City if he can), believing he’ll be back in the gym by the time his offseason would have normally started anyway.
“I’ll be with the staff in the gym and on the ice all summer so that’s actually going to be maybe even better for me in a way, spending so much time around the organization,” he says.
He’s also just used to it all. Rehabbing. Building and rebuilding. Growing (literally and figuratively). Learning. Studying.
His development has been one big science project.
His story is one of modern training — of turning an atypical athlete into a first-round pick and, hopefully, a unicorn NHLer.
He, and a team of specialists, have put the puzzle pieces together, taken them apart, and put them back together many times before. Now they’ll just have to do it again.
Last summer, Lamoureux couldn’t really work out while he rehabbed from his first shoulder surgery.
Instead, with the monitoring of his strength coach Stephane Dube, he ate … a lot.
“Six meals a day, and not a small amount,” Dube told The Athletic. “Big meals.”
His orders included eating right before bed (chicken from his grandmother’s farm and garlic pasta), normally a big no-no for athletes, so that it could sit with him overnight before a morning of training.
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Sometimes he’d go to bed having eaten so much that he’d feel like he was going to puke. It resulted in 15 pounds of lean muscle — the only kind he and his metabolism have ever been able to add.
“I had to,” he said.
Dube began working with Lamoureux five years ago. Their relationship became “an instant classic” — a common refrain from those who get to know Lamoureux.
“The chemistry was there from the get-go,” Dube said. “This kid always wears a beautiful smile on his face and it feels like there’s no bad days for him. I loved his personality from the start and his athletic potential was a rocket as well.”
Even at 14-15 years old, he was already “taller than everybody.” So tall that people would think he was older than he was, unfairly expecting things of him that they’d ask of juniors, or even professionals, when he was still in minor hockey.
Dube had to constantly remind himself, “Steph, he’s only 15, don’t focus on the size, focus on the age.”
He was also skinny. But he was dedicated to figuring it out and he had surprising athleticism for his height even early on.
“When we started I was like ‘Oh,’” Dube said of Lamoureux’s movement. “And that’s why I put so much emphasis on that. Because it was already good and if we can perfect that, the potential is going to be really, really high for him. The first year when he was with me, I felt there was big potential for him and I put him with older guys. And Mav, everything was new to him. My training philosophy, the agility and coordination drills we were doing, and he was doing extremely well and he was not way behind the other guys. So from there I was like, ‘Whoa, we’ve really got something,’ because I was expecting his coordination to be really, really off and it was really good.”
Early on, Dube told him he wasn’t going to focus on his body weight but rather on his overall development. His end weight, he was told, based on his makeup, would likely be 220-230 pounds. But that weight would come naturally and they’d add it when his body was ready.
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Though he was always a top prospect (Lamoureux was the No. 12 pick in the 2020 QMJHL draft, long before the Coyotes used the No. 29 pick in the NHL Draft on him), Lamoureux was told that he couldn’t expect to play in the NHL at 19 or 20 like others of his calibre aimed for, and agreed to settle on a goal of 22 or 23 with Dube.
“If you look at him, the quality of his muscle mass tells you that he has a very high ceiling. It was just a matter of time. And when we started, I told him, ‘We’re going to be together for many years, so let’s focus on the overall plan, which is not only next year, or in two years, it’s for you to make the NHL and stay there,'” Dube said. “And he bought into the concept from Day 1.”
More important than his weight, Dube said, would be his skating.
“If a 6-foot-7 kid can skate and be agile like a 5-foot-11 kid, you’re going to make it, you’re going to play,” Dube told him.
He had the genetics. His dad was a hockey player. His mom was an athlete. His brother is a “lacrosse phenom” who is a “copy-and-paste of Mav — tall, skinny, loves working out,” according to Dube. His body fat has always been under 8 percent and he’s never eaten junk food.
When he lost a lot of weight following surgery when he couldn’t work out, though, the message changed and became “OK, we’re going to have to go harder if we want to get the body weight back and bring it to the next level.”
As has always been Lamoureux’s answer, he said, “Whatever it takes.” In the first couple of weeks after ramping up his eating, he showed up to the gym saying, “Oh my God, training is so easy!”
Then it started to become: “That’s my new way of life.”
Lamoureux also moved up into another group at the gym, joining Dube’s NHL group because he again felt he was ready for it both physically and mentally.
“The kid wants to be a professional. He acts like a professional,” Dube said.
Hey Boots, just wanted to let you know that I made the TEAMMMMMM!!!! WE DID IT!
That’s the text Lamoureux sent Paul Boutilier after he learned that he’d made the Canadian world junior team.
Boutilier is a unique type of skills and development coach in that he only works with D.
After his own playing career, which included two world juniors, a QMJHL defenseman of the year award and eight seasons in the NHL (which also included winning a Stanley Cup with the Islanders), Boutilier went back to school and wrote a report on how to teach defensemen in the new era, sending it to NHL teams unsolicited. After a phone call from then-Predators general manager David Poile, who’d read it in full, he has now coached in the NHL, AHL, QMJHL and USports.
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His development program is called 44 SECONDS, and its premise is straightforward: There are 45 seconds in a shift and a defenseman is lucky to have the puck on (and then off of) his stick for one of those seconds. Boutilier mentors and coaches the other 44 seconds so that when that one second with the puck comes, his clients can execute it faster and simpler. He works with NHLers like Noah Dobson, David Savard and Thomas Chabot, as well as prospects like Tristan Luneau and Mattias Havelid.
His teachings have made a world of difference with Lamoureux, whom he has worked with since he was 16.
Together, they started by straightening up his back angles and posture, beginning with his hand placement on his stick to bring his eyes and head up, instead of down and chasing stick-on-puck (where they’re vulnerable to overextend, allowing opposing players to push through his hand hands) like all D are taught to at lower levels — a pet peeve of Boutilier’s.
At his height, just lifting him up took “extensive work for him to get over that hurdle.”
“If he can’t get any information in his mind, then he’s doing too much and too late and everything is erratic,” Boutilier said. “He has to do the playing, not me, I’m done. So it’s teaching them how to fish rather than just giving them something to eat.”
In the early days, Boutilier made Lamoureux take a puck with him everywhere he went, something he does with all of his clients as a way to prove a point.
On the bus. On his bedside table. He even told him to ask that puck questions and wait for an answer.
Eventually, Lamoureux came back to him and said, “I’m so tired of looking at it,” and Boutilier told him, “Well then don’t.”
“Adam Fox can tell you what the person in the third row of Madison Square Garden is drinking versus where the puck is,” Boutilier said. “He’s an average skater, average size, average everything Norris Trophy winner and it’s like, ‘Well, what’s making him tick?’ And it’s because his mind is so good that what he gathers in, he’s got everything figured out before he even gets the puck.”
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From there, Boutilier taught Lamoureux to start his shifts from the bench, taking in information from the opposing team and assessing his last shift with one key tenant in mind.
Slow the game down, speed up the execution.
Once his shifts start, Boutilier taught him to play a game of looking and counting. The better he’d use his eyes, the less likely he’d be to make a one-foot mistake that results in a penalty or a goal against.
Eventually, it began to stick, and Lamoureux’s game took some big steps, Boutilier’s lessons constantly in the back of his mind.
Skating back to a puck? Accepting a pass? Setting a gap? Before you do, count to five (opposing players). That’s your inventory. It’s that basic.
Eyes up, great posture, count.
You play them, they don’t play you.
“If you know what you’re looking for, you only need to look once instead of three or four times because if you see one or zero of their players on the strong side, you know early you’re taking that side,” Boutilier explained.
(Here’s an example of an early-season teaching clip Boutilier stent Lamoureux, provided with his permission.)
Over time, new habits developed.
“For a guy that’s 6-foot-7.5, if you have a bad back angle and everything comes off line, well then you lose your feet, and you lose your hands, and you lose your mobility, and your feet are wide and things get a little bit too quick for you and you make mistakes from there,” Boutilier said. “He looked like a kid with enormous skill for that size. For him to shoot one-timers with ease and get them on the net using a stick that long, the physics of that is massive versus a guy who is shooting one-timers at 5-foot-11. So the process was lifting him up and becoming 6-foot-7, and staying there, and defending that way, and using your feet and your eyes to defend and not necessarily just his stick blade.”
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Then, with repetition, confidence began to build,
“Mav’s been a great student. He’s so upbeat. He’s a great kid. He’s a fascinating young man for sure,” Boutilier finished. “(Utah) are going to be happy with him.”
The first thing Coyotes development coach Kurtis Foster thinks when he thinks about Lamoureux is that “he’s just a wonderful kid” who “exudes confidence, is always in a good mood, and makes people around him feel comfortable.”
In his first year on the job last season, Foster said Lamoureux actually helped him get comfortable because of the immediate connection he formed with him. Last season, Foster also visited Lamoureux once a month in Quebec when he was injured so they could work together one-on-one.
Foster works hand-in-hand with Boutilier, too, exchanging info and bridging gaps.
He knows firsthand how hard Lamoureux worked to get back last time.
Once he did, Lamoureux impressed at both the Coyotes’ rookie tournament and main camp last fall. Then he posted 33 points and a plus-21 rating in just 39 games with Drummondville before the other shoulder popped.
“We’re pretty excited with where he’s gotten to,” Foster said. “And it’s on him. He has put the work in, he has added layers to his game. He’s a kid who always wants to learn more about the game. So it doesn’t surprise me that he’s having success.”
They always knew that he was a big man who could skate and had a presence about him defensively and physically — a presence which has resulted in multiple suspensions, including two more this season before the injury (for two games for kneeing in an October 13 game and then again on November 17 for fighting in the final five minutes of a two-goal game).
Foster and Lamoureux have worked to keep him hard to play against while remaining more disciplined.
Despite the two suspensions in the fall, Foster felt he’d done a much better job of imposing himself in games without taking penalties. So did Lamoureux, pre-injury.
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“I feel like before I always wanted to go for the big hit. It’s always fun but I was looking for it way too much last year. Now, I’m just letting it come to me,” Lamoureux said. “I learned to control my body more this year.”
He also noticed Boutilier’s pointers settling him down.
“A lot of his improved play is through his puck play. His ability to move pucks quickly, to activate into the offense, and on the offensive zone blue line has really gone to a new level,” Foster said.
Boutilier’s efforts to raise him up actually run counter to the way Foster was taught to posture himself during his playing days. But he sees the value.
Said Foster: “The majority of big men you’re trying to lower the center of gravity, you’re trying to get them into a better athletic position so that they can use that size and strength. I look back on myself when I played and Jacques Lemaire used to always be all over me about bending my knees. And with Mav, we didn’t have to worry about that. We wanted to work on his posture and how he accepted the rush but he’s a freak physically where he’s in great shape and he’s very mobile. He can sit in a full squat sitting on the floor and I was like ‘wow, most men can’t do that, let alone a guy who is 6-foot-7.’”
Others have begun to take note, too.
In 33 years of working with hockey players, Dube has trained a lot of tall players. He still calls Lamoureux “by far the smoothest skater for his size.”
Sherbrooke head coach Gilles Bouchard, who has coached against Lamoureux in the QMJHL and with him as the D coach for Canada at the world juniors, says his improvement the last two seasons caught the entire league’s attention.
“In our league he is a man,” said Bouchard. “He’s reliable, he’s a big guy on the ice, (and) his mobility and speed is very good.”
Most importantly, before his latest injury, Lamoureux could feel the difference.
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His work with Dube, and all of that food, was “huge.”
“I feel way more stable, way more stronger, and I’m winning way more battles too. Just separating the guy from the puck is so much easier now,” he said.
So too has been his four years of work with Boutilier, which he says has “made me the player I am today.”
“He taught me how to be a real defenseman and how to be a defenseman in the NHL after that. And that’s coming,” Lamoureux finished, repeating the catchphrases one last time … like Robocop.
Scan the ice.
Take in information.
Count.Slow the game down, speed up the execution.
GO DEEPER
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(Top photo: Ghyslain Bergeron / Drummondville Voltigeurs)
