(Arlington, Virginia) “He’s not ready. »
Zachary Bolduc has not forgotten Craig Berube’s words about him almost a year ago. The St. Louis Blues head coach explained why his team’s 2021 first-round pick was returned to his junior club, the Quebec Remparts. Berube also listed the shortcomings the youngster needed to address, starting with his skating and defensive play.
If Bolduc still remembers these words, it is partly because they are not the most pleasant to hear. And secondly because, by his own admission, “it was the truth”.
“I know I didn’t show them what kind of player I could be,” the Quebecer said last Tuesday on the sidelines of the NHL Rookie Showcase in Arlington, Virginia.
He wonders if, “perhaps”, he did not, at the time, have “a bit of a head for Quebec”. “I knew what was coming, the team and the ambitions we had,” he recalls.
In fact, with the Remparts, Bolduc had a second straight 50-goal season, finished among the league’s leading scorers and helped win the Memorial Cup.
Still, during the winter, he didn’t just have his head in Quebec. Each week, his trainer, Patrick Roy, multiplied the video sessions with him in order to target specific elements to refine for the “next year”. That is to say the 2023-2024 season, the one that is about to begin today.
On the threshold of the Blues’ training camp, Bolduc finds himself in front of a “blank page”. “I can’t go back, it’s really a step forward,” he said. I think I’m ready to attack that. »
During the few minutes of conversation, the word “trust” comes up twice in Bolduc’s responses. “It’s up to me to play with confidence, to go for it, not to play on the heels,” he said first.
He then evokes the same theme to put the uncertainty that awaits him in the coming weeks into perspective. While he claims to believe in himself enough to hope for a job with the Blues, he knows that a detour to Springfield, in the American League, is likely. St. Louis is obviously his first choice, and he knows that if he’s entrenched in camp, he might “gobble it up a bit.”
But if so, “you roll up your sleeves.”
Bolduc is, moreover, aware of the state of play at the Blues. With the acquisition of Kevin Hayes over the summer, and those of Kasperi Kapanen and Jakub Vrana last season, the attack is virtually complete. But he also knows the organization is in the midst of a changing of the guard, which saw Ryan O’Reilly and Vladimir Tarasenko leave last season.
“I’ve seen all the trades they’ve made, and I sense a certain youthful bend,” he said. It’s up to me to take my place. »
History does not say if he will succeed this fall. But, clearly, the message of last year was heard. And understood. We won’t take it again.
