BC Bulletin

BC Men's Hockey Forward Dean Letourneau Solved his Scoring Bug: What Changed?

Dean Letourneau, the Boston Bruins' 2024 first-round NHL Draft pick, is proving doubters wrong this season after an unsuccessful freshman campaign at BC.
Graham Dietz|
Boston College men's hockey (@BC_MHockey) via X.

During the summer of 2024, after Boston College men’s hockey wrapped up the 2023-24 season with a National Championship berth, BC commit Dean Letourneau was forced to make a career-altering decision.

Letourneau was planning on returning to the USHL to play for the Sioux Falls Stampede for the 2024-25 season. He was set on developing for a year in the U.S.’s premier junior professional hockey league—which the majority of college hockey players do before heading to the NCAA—and eventually make his way to Chestnut Hill, Mass., in the summer of 2025.

But BC men’s hockey coach Greg Brown gave Letourneau a call, which made all the difference—for better or for worse.

“I think it was halfway through the [2024 NHL] combine, so I already had half my interviews done and I told all those teams I was going to Sioux Falls,” Letourneau, the Boston Bruins’ 2024 first-round draft pick, said. “And then I get a call from coach [Greg] Brown.”

What happened next somewhat shocked the college hockey landscape. Letourneau failed to put a single puck in the net for the Eagles as a freshman, recording just three points on three assists. 

Brown, however, predicted Letourneau’s trajectory to a tee.

“It was a hard year [for Letourneau],” Brown said in his preseason press conference. “Everyone is on their own timetable. And for the guys that are really tall, I’ve said this before, it’s usually a longer time and a longer runway for them to get acclimated to being that size. It’s really hard for young teenagers, [you] probably see it in every sport, but I’m more familiar with hockey, and not unlike some of the very tall players that have come in before, it’s really hard as a freshman.”

BC is only four games into its 2025-26 campaign, but Letourneau has already shown encouraging signs from his rookie-to-sophomore transition, to say the least.

With two goals and two assists through four games, which surpasses the point total he registered a year ago in 36 games played, Letourneau is morphing into a new version of himself.

It was unclear how long it would take Letourneau to get to this juncture, or—to his biggest haters down Commonwealth Avenue at Boston University—if it would ever happen.

But it isn’t just Letourneau’s production on the stat sheet that has confirmed this obvious transformation. It goes beyond the goals and assists.

Letourneau focused on strengthening his body over the offseason, putting on roughly 15 pounds of muscle in order to take his play to the next level in the physical realm.

The reality is that Letourneau’s confidence is soaring because of the way he learned to utilize his body. Brown cited former BC hockey forward Kevin Hayes as an example of a player who went through a similar transition from high school to college, and even when Hayes, who is 6-foot-5, took his career a further step, from college hockey to the NHL.

When that combines with a point-per-game average, which he is currently manufacturing, something tangible blossoms from a mental standpoint, and he is just in the early stages of this new chapter.

Letourneau has started to gain more ice time as a result, which grows his exposure to the physicality that is required at the NCAA level.

His shots per game margin has shot up, and that is all because of how he learned to position himself—a 6-foot-7, 217-pound body—to maximize success in the offensive zone.

Take his latest goal as an example. 

Maneuvering his positioning to the center of the slot after initially keeping the puck in on the boards with his backhand, Letourneau created space with his body and ripped a one-timer on his knee. He boxed out a defenseman with his lower half, turned when the puck slid in his direction, and crisply roofed the puck into the upper-right corner of the net.

His pure scoring ability—the shooting talent that he possessed at St. Andrew’s College during high school—was there when he first came to BC. But that additional factor of utilizing his frame to create separation, which leads to scoring chances, is a fresh feature of Letourneau’s skillset.

The speed of Letourneau’s stick while ripping a shot is one that very few NCAA defensemen can keep up with. His lightning-quick release was evident from the aforementioned goal he scored against RPI, in the Eagles’ 5-1 road win on Friday—including his game-tying goal in BC's tie up at Minnesota a week prior, when he lit the lamp with a filthy snipe from the high circle with four minutes left in the third frame, down 2-1.

As Letourneau begins to move his feet in front of the crease more—as opposed to standing upright in a position to take a shot—it will free him up in the offensive zone even more.

Letourneau has visibly grasped an understanding of zone awareness, which came with his realization of how to use the massive size he possesses in smaller, more-contained corners or quadrants of the ice. But once he combines size with speed, which he has already begun to feel out, his production could skyrocket to even higher levels than where it is currently, which has already substantially increased from a season prior.

Another fun aspect of Letourneau’s size is when he sees an opportunity to lay a torrential, open-ice hit.

The more he does so, as long as his offensive output remains at a steady level, he is soon going to be the fan favorite among the Boston College hockey fanbase, and chants of his name going “Dean, Dean, Dean” will be echoing from the rafters in Conte Forum all year long.

Read More:

Published
Graham Dietz
GRAHAM DIETZ

Graham Dietz is a 2025 graduate of Boston College and subsequently joined Boston College On SI. He previously served as an editor for The Heights, the independent student newspaper, from fall 2021, including as Sports Editor from 2022-23. Graham works for The Boston Globe as a sports correspondent, covering high school football, girls' basketball, and baseball. He was also a beat writer for the Chatham Anglers of the Cape Cod Baseball League in the summer of 2023.

Share on XFollow graham_dietz
Home/Hockey