The jury will be out for some time, but the early returns of the Boston Bruins 2020 draft class continue to generate positive momentum. A pair of college players, in particular, are making a positive impression around hockey for their strong starts to the 2021-22 campaign.
Providence College freshman Riley Duran was recently named Hockey East co-Rookie of the Week. Duran, a Woburn, Mass. native, put up four points for the Friars in helping his team go 4-0 last weekend. Selected in the sixth round out of Lawrence Academy, Duran spent the 2020-21 season in the USHL with the Youngstown Phantoms and has been a net positive in his first NCAA season, tallying five goals and 11 points in 21 games on a veteran-laden club.
Though he was initially a surprise second-round pick, not many are surprised by Ohio State defenseman Mason Lohrei these days. A second-year draft-eligible, Lohrei was USHL defenseman of the year with the Green Bay Gamblers and has been even more impressive as a Buckeyes freshman, leading the team in scoring with 14 points in 16 games. His combination of size, skating, poise and production in the Big Ten Conference has made him one of the organization’s prized prospects.
Why Duran has effectively transitioned to college hockey
As the old adage goes, sometimes you need to take a step back before you can leap forward. After a tough USHL season on the league’s worst club, that appears to be what Duran has done.
There are many challenges facing a player who was a high-end prep hockey performer who then leaves home in the middle of a pandemic and suddenly finds himself in a top junior league where everyone seems to expect him to make an instant transition. Those high expectations were likely influenced by him being an NHL draft pick, and it took Duran a while to find his footing in the USHL. The 6-foot-2, 195-pound center never really got comfortable and didn’t have much of a supporting cast around him, but it appears that the experience set him up to be better prepared for the ups and downs of being a freshman on a top team with a lot of returning upperclassmen in Providence.
Watching Duran at B’s development camp last Aug., he appeared to be confident in his first such rookie event with the organization since being selected 182nd overall in Oct. 2020. He’s a big body who can move up and down the ice well and is a strong north-south player who can get through traffic and take pucks to the net.
It is important for a player like Duran to understand what he is at this stage of his development, and he seems to get that he just needs to possess the puck, help generate scoring chances off the cycle and be ready to go when his number gets called. He has enough skill to eventually develop into a top-six forward at the NCAA level, but that time isn’t now, and he’s embraced the chance to bring more modest contributions. Putting up a half-point per game is a win for Providence, as he was a late-round project pick.
More was expected of him offensively in his one season in juniors, but the reality is that Duran seems to have been humbled a bit by that experience and understands that he’s not going to walk many defensemen 1-on-1 at this level or the next. Some of the keys to his success as a freshman are to skate hard, get pucks in deep and then grind it out on the cycle to boost Providence’s puck-possession style of play.
Duran has done that and more. The B’s have to be encouraged that he’s earning a regular role, playing for a detail-oriented coach in Nate Leaman, but also finding ways to produce secondary scoring for his team. His 11 points rank seventh on the Friars in scoring, but his plus-7 rating is second only to fellow freshman and defender Guillaume Richard’s +15. Plus/minus is a limited statistic, but it does speak to Duran’s two-way impact in the early going and the fact that he’s not a defensive liability, often the biggest thing that can derail a younger, more inexperienced player’s ice time on a top team.
All in all, it’s been a good start. Don’t expect him to lead the Hockey East in scoring, even when he’s at the peak of his development and usage, but he has the attributes to be a solid pro and potentially better than where you might project him based on his draft position alone. Score it a solid pick by the Bruins.
How Lohrei keeps elevating his prospect profile
A polarizing pick at 58th overall as a 19-year-old who was passed over in the 2019 NHL Entry Draft and wasn’t on many (if any) public lists and rankings heading into the virtual event unlike any other draft in history due to COVID-19.
Now, some 14 months later, it sure looks like Boston was onto something with the former Culver military cadet who was nearly cut from his 16-U team as a forward and switched to defense, just a couple of short years before he became a top-60 NHL pick at the position.
Lohrei’s 59 points led the USHL in his second season, a huge leap from his first full year in 2019-20. Spending most of the 2018-19 campaign at Culver playing for his school’s prep team, he played just 9 scoreless games in the USHL with Green Bay, not even registering on the draft radar in his first kick at the can. However, after 37 points in 2020, he caught the attention of NHL teams who weren’t looking at what he was, but what he could be. Boston, without a first-round pick after dealing it to Anaheim at the 2020 trade deadline (the Ducks chose Jacob Perreault 27th overall), went wildly off the (public) board for Lohrei, but that approach has been validated since.
That he is leading his team in scoring as a first-year defenseman no less is pretty remarkable, but it speaks to the high levels of offensive skill and instincts the Wisconsin native possesses. At 6-foot-4, 200 pounds, he brings imposing size but is an extremely agile, yet powerful skater. He’s light on his edges and can make crisp fluid direction changes. Still developing his defensive acumen and situational play, his offensive instincts from having spent most of his hockey career to date skating up front are what have allowed him to jump right in and be the catalyst to the Buckeye attack.
Lohrei handles the puck smoothly and at speed, able to see the ice and advance plays decisively with hard, on-target passes. On the power play, he distributes pucks through seams and soft spots in opposing defenses, while directing players with an authority that looks like a junior or senior upperclassman. He’ll need to refine the mechanics of his shot and keep working on adding strength and mass to increase power on his drive, but he’s getting there. You don’t want to create unrealistic expectations, but he has a playing style similar to that of Charlie McAvoy, but as a left-shot, will be employed on the opposite side as No. 73 when he eventually reaches the NHL.
Will the B’s entice Lohrei to turn pro after just one NCAA season? There is much behind the scenes that goes into such a move, but if the past is any indication, the team won’t think twice about signing him if they think he’s ready to be a pro. That’s not to say that he will be skating around with a Spoked B on his person a year from now, but he’s certainly made a discussion out of it.
Given how it looked when the B’s first called his name, that’s quite the upward trajectory.
