There was a time about halfway through Zach Hyman’s junior season with the University of Michigan Wolverines where it seemed like he might miss a game or two because of a minor injury. Though far from an offensive force to that point in his NCAA career, the coaching staff considered him a player they simply could not afford to be without even for just a short time.
“We were devastated as a coaching staff because we knew we couldn’t afford to lose him. He was that valuable for what he added,” U of M assistant coach Brian Wiseman told The Sporting News in a recent interview. “It still wasn’t goals and assists but he set the tempo for our team, he set the work ethic, he set the compete level, we needed him in our lineup if we were going to do anything that year.”
Those words, without attribution, could easily be mistaken for ones offered by Mike Babcock, his current coach with the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Hyman arrived at Michigan in 2011 as a draft pick of the Florida Panthers a year earlier and just months after being named the Canadian Junior Hockey League player of the year, scoring a staggering 42 goals and 102 points in 43 games with the Hamilton Red Wings of the OJHL.
But his freshman and sophomore seasons, scoring a combined six goals in 79 games, did not go the way he wanted. In his junior season, his production started to come around albeit slowly. He ended that season with seven goals and 10 assists in 35 games, reasonable numbers but certainly not at the level one would think would leave a coaching staff with that much discontent if they had to forge on without him.
With Hyman, just as it is now in Toronto, it was about more than just the numbers.
“He did things the right way always. Whether it was in school, away from the rink, socially, he did things the right way,” said Wiseman. “He was a young professional; he was a professional before he was a professional in his approach. He was a joy here, he really was. He’s a dynamite kid.”
The following season Hyman took off, scoring 22 goals and 54 points, tying for the most goals in the Big-10 Conference and leading the way in points. Hyman’s running-mate that season was Dylan Larkin, an elite-level freshman and the 15th overall draft pick of the Detroit Red Wings in 2014.
“He’s a mature young man, he’s so grounded, his work ethic is what you want out of everybody on your team,” said Wiseman. “We wanted Dylan Larkin to learn from that and be around that guy, in addition to their chemistry on the ice with Hyman’s work ethic, his relentless pursuit on pucks, his ability to get Dylan the puck in space with speed.”
Hyman admitted that those first two years, struggling to produce offensively the way he was accustomed to, weighed on him.
“It’s difficult when you’re not producing and doing things that you think you’re capable of and want to be doing but that’s when you learn the most, when you go through those times of adversity and that’s when you learn to dig deep,” said Hyman.
In hindsight, those struggles forced him to evolve his game and discover what type of player he needed to be to continue climbing the ranks.
“Coming out of college, I knew what time of player I needed to be to be successful at the pro level and that was just being a hard working guy doing the little things like stripping pucks, getting to the net, blocking shots, penalty killing,” said Hyman. “Those things get you into the league and then once you are in the league, you become more confident and scoring will come.”
History with Hyman suggests that to be true. Just like at Michigan, his offensive production in Junior A started slowly with the Red Wings of the OJHL with 13 goals in 49 games. The following year, however, he put up 35 goals in 49 games before climbing to nearly a goal-per-game pace in his final season.
“At every level you have to adjust. In Junior A there was an adjustment period in my first year, in college there was an adjustment for the first couple of years and then in the NHL, there is obviously a big adjustment period,” said Hyman. “Every level you have to find out things that you’re good at and successful at. In juniors I was able to get away just using my speed and scoring to be a pure scorer, in college it was a lot tougher to do that so I had to learn to play a two-way game, learn how to forecheck, penalty kill and play on the defensive side of the puck. Coach (Red) Berenson and coach (Brian) Wiseman were a big part of that helping me learn to be a more well-rounded player and play without the puck.”
The little things
Now in his second full season with the Maple Leafs, Hyman is focused on building on the 10 goals and 18 assists he notched last year, decent numbers, but for some not high enough playing alongside Auston Matthews, who scored 40 goals and won the Calder Trophy.
The topic really gained traction when Hyman went 35 games between Dec. 13 and March 2 without scoring an even-strength goal. However, during that same stretch, Matthews scored 15 even-strength goals playing alongside Hyman. Over a full season, that is a 35-goal pace. Guess who led the NHL in even strength goals in 2016-17? That’s right, Matthews with 32.
When the Maple Leafs signed Patrick Marleau in the summer, the assumption from many was that the 38-year-old who had previously spent his entire 19-year career with the San Jose Sharks would take Hyman’s spot alongside Matthews. But Babcock, who kept Hyman with Matthews for all 82 games last season, has not shown any desire to break them up.
A Toronto native, Hyman acknowledged he is aware of the fact some would like to see somebody else in his spot alongside Matthews, but the 25-year-old has learned to ignore the chatter.
“For me, I try not to read any of that stuff but being from Toronto, everybody talks about the Leafs, your friends, your family,” said Hyman, too polite to drop a “you people” into his response. “But they’ve been respectful in that sense when you get home, you don’t want to talk about what you do all day. You’re going to hear things in the media as much as you try to avoid it, it’s everywhere. You just have to care about the opinions of the players in the room and the coaching staff and people in the organization. That’s all you’ve got to focus on.”
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Among people in the dressing room, including his coach and Matthews himself, he has their support. Babcock regularly uses words like “drive-train player” and “machine” to describe Hyman. Just prior to the start of the regular season, the coach said, “We think (Hyman’s) the best forechecker in hockey.”
Remember, Babcock does not hand out compliments to that degree lightly. If you get them, they are earned.
“They’re obviously big compliments. I just try to go out there and play my game but it’s nice when the coach appreciates what you do and what you bring to a line,” said Hyman. “I’m playing with two really, really good players and just trying to do my part to help us win games.”
Matthews seems to appreciate what Hyman offers as well.
“He’s really good at forechecking, putting pressure on the defense and creating space for myself and Willie (Nylander) so we can go to work,” added Matthews. “He’s just really good at that whole dynamic and it works really well between us three.”
Babcock recently related a story from his experience coaching the Detroit Red Wings that has come to affect the way he assembles lines. Conventional wisdom suggests loading up lines with the best players and letting them go to work but Babcock said a conversation with Pavel Datsyuk altered his philosophy. Datsyuk told Babcock he did not want two other guys on his line who always wanted the puck because he always wanted the puck. There’s only one puck on the ice which meant two guys were always unhappy. Instead, Datsyuk pleaded to have a player on his line who was interested in getting him the puck and would not be reluctant to give it up when he gets it.
That’s where Hyman comes in. Matthews always wants the puck. Hyman knows his role is to get him the puck or create space to let him go to work.
Every now and again Babcock is asked about the possibility of a change, but whenever he is the normally affable coach offers a response in a tone that suggests he is not interested in having a long conversation on the matter.
“I think he has a lot more skill than you people give him credit for,” said Babcock.
Any time the “you people” comes out, you know it’s a point of contention.
“Part of his skill set is his ability to get the puck back, his net front, his passes from below the goal line, those things are excellent,” Babcock continued. “I still think that as he becomes a confident NHL player, he’s going to score more.”
The power of chemistry
Hyman’s senior year in Michigan, through a twist of fate, played a big part in leading him to a starring role on his hometown team. Not unlike his partnership with Matthews, Hyman and Larkin found immediate chemistry and brought the best out in each other.
“We all talk about this magic word of chemistry and how do we get this chemistry on a line,” said Wiseman. “It’s about guys who complement each other to maximize their fullest potential and I think a guy like Zach Hyman brings so many great attributes to a guy like Auston Matthews or Dylan Larkin at Michigan which allows them to be great players. And of course Matthews allows Hyman to be a tremendous player.”
A familiar face around the Michigan campus that season was none other than Babcock himself, who made regular trips to keep an eye on Larkin while coaching the Red Wings. The drive from Detroit to the U of M campus in Ann Arbor is only about 40 minutes. It was during these visits where he could not help but notice Larkin’s linemate.
“Well for sure, that’s when I saw him and I also knew he was coming to be a free agent so you’re always thinking about him,” said Babcock. “He’s starting to come now like he was there, it takes you a while unless you’re one of these elite skill guys to make plays at the next level. He never scored his first couple years of college but really did at the end.”
As fate would have it, Babcock was also coming to be a free agent at the end of that season and wound up leaving the Red Wings to coach the Maple Leafs. Babcock was hired on May 20, 2015. Less than a month later, the Maple Leafs acquired Hyman’s rights in a trade with the Florida Panthers for Greg McKegg and signed him to a two-year entry level contract a few days later. That was probably not a coincidence.
Unlike Larkin and Matthews, who long seemed destined for NHL stardom, Hyman’s ascendance to the highest level has been a story of perseverance. Larkin, after one season at Michigan, was in the NHL at 19 years old. Matthews scored four goals in his NHL debut a few months after being selected as the first pick in the 2016 draft. Hyman was picked 123rd overall in 2010 and did not play his first NHL game for nearly another six years.
But now years later, Wiseman said Hyman’s story of perseverance has become a staple around the Michigan campus of where hard work can lead.
“Our coaching staff tells his story often amongst our kids and the recruits we talk to, there’s a kid that just stuck to it,” said Wiseman. “He had some road blocks along the way but he found a way to keep pushing and working at his craft. It was an impressive evolution for someone who had such high expectations coming in and maybe not meeting those expectations, whose ever expectations those were in terms of the goals and assists part of it, and just understanding that it is a process where hard will work pay off. He believed in himself, he believed in what we were trying to do and the whole time he was very humble about everything in his senior year when he really took off and established himself as one of the premiere players in college hockey.”
While Matthews, Nylander and Mitchell Marner drew so much acclaim last season, shattering many long-time Maple Leafs rookie records, Hyman set a Maple Leafs offensive rookie-record of his own with four shorthanded goals. It’s not surprising that Hyman excels on the penalty kill, a facet of the game that requires good old hard work, tenacity and sometimes that ability to just out-will your opponent.
“You just want to be as good as you possibly can. I want to leave it out there all the time and just giving it your all,” said Hyman. “If you don’t do that, there’s no point in doing what you’re doing. If you want to do something, give yourself the chance to be great at it by giving it everything that you have. That’s my mentality not just with hockey but with everything because I feel that’s the only way you are going to be successful.”
Having the support of the coach certainly helps.
“He lives in this town, his family lives in this town, whether he reads it or not, someone’s reading it and telling him about it and so after a while maybe that bangs on you if you’re not strong,” said Babcock. “I just tell him he’s a good player, play good.”