(Zurich, Switzerland) “Every time we meet him, he’s either at the gym or eating! »

Zurich Lions head coach Marc Crawford warned us about Vinzenz Rohrer. The hope of the Canadian eats, eats and eats again.

Rohrer will meet us at the restaurant of the Swiss Life Arena. He doesn’t suspect anything, but we saved his sanity by arriving at the precise moment Midnight in Chelsea was playing in the background. He won’t have to endure Jon Bon Jovi’s undrinkable hit.

In short, Rohrer comes out of training, ate “an hour and a half ago”, but seeing that La Presse intends to have a bite to eat, he goes too. Two pizzas are on the way.

The forward eats because at 172 lbs, his frame is the priority. It was even among the factors that prompted him to leave the Ottawa 67s, in the Ontario Junior League, to continue his development among the pros in Europe. In fact, that’s “the main reason.”

The pizzas arrive just during his explanation. Mahlzeit!

Rohrer, the Canadian’s 3rd round pick in 2022, will then take us on a tour of the Lions’ infrastructure, where we can see that he trains in an environment worthy of the NHL.

The training should help him correct a deficiency identified by Crawford. “In many of our measures, like being first on the puck and puck battles, he is among our leaders,” he reveals. If it’s with his legs, he wins. But he hasn’t developed enough strength in his arms, his upper body, so he loses these battles. »

Crawford warned us about another thing: Rohrer is “very interesting.” The very conformist world of hockey struggles to bring out the personality of the players. But Rohrer’s comes out quite naturally.

It stands out on trivial details like his preferred means of transport. He goes to the arena by bike every day, a journey of around twenty minutes. An electric bike, he specifies, but he defends his choice. “Along the way there is a good climb for about 500m. When the bus takes us back to the arena after a road game, I get home at 3 a.m. There’s no way I’m going to climb this hill with a normal bike at this hour! »

His initiative earns him ridicule from his teammates. Even his compatriot David Reinbacher is amused. “That’s good Vinzenz! », he says.

“The guys are discouraged, they tell me to buy a car! “, says Rohrer.

He is also surprising when he says he is continuing his French lessons. Last year, Law colleague Jean-François Plante revealed his francization efforts. And even though he lives in German Switzerland, he does not want to abandon his project.

His approach starts from secondary school, where he had to choose between French and Spanish. Advice from his mother, who speaks both: “Take Spanish, it’s easier as a German speaker. »

“I had forgotten this part, my mother reminded me of it recently. I said to him: why would I speak Spanish? There is no Spanish hockey club. And she tells me: there is no French-speaking club either. And I tell him: no, there’s Montreal! I won’t need Spanish, probably not French either, but I said: there is at least one case where it would be convenient! But I was 12 or 13, the idea of ​​a career in hockey wasn’t yet concrete. »

He still has a way to go. In Ottawa, his classes focused mainly on writing, but he understood that he had better concentrate on speaking, because “I will never have to write an essay! “.

“It’s hard, all the rules for saying the words. In Spanish, if I see a word, I know how to pronounce it. But in French, there are so many rules. » He mentions the words “dog” and “Austrian”, and clearly the nasal pronunciation is giving him difficulty. “That sounds like Chinese to me! I can roll the “r”, we do it in German. But this sound is difficult. It’s like the “a” and the “u” become an “o”. And the last letter of a word, do I pronounce it? How am I supposed to know? »

Rohrer has 5 points in 18 games this season. He is limited to a dozen minutes per game, but Marc Crawford assures that he projects “in the first two trios” next year, in what will be his last year of contract in Zurich.

The Habs would have preferred that he stay in Ontario. “Their biggest concern, what they were saying, is that at my age you have to play. You can do as much as you want in the gym, hockey is hockey and if I play five minutes per game, it’s not better. The league here is very good, the team has so much depth, that was their biggest worry. I don’t want to jinx myself, but things are going well so far. »

By returning to Europe, however, Rohrer becomes a long-term project for CH, an advantage for a club that has selected 29 players in the last three drafts, in a system where clubs are limited to 50 professional contracts.

If he had stayed in Ontario, Rohrer would have had until June 2024 to reach an agreement with Montreal. But now that he is playing in Europe, the Habs retain his rights until June 2026. Information that escaped the young man until it was mentioned to him, but which matters little to him. “Whether I have until 2024 or 2026, it doesn’t change much, because I have to improve. I just want to make it to the NHL. »