BC Lands Top 2005 Prospect

Boston College received a major commitment on Wednesday night as forward Gabriel Perreault announced his intentions to play at BC next fall. Perreault, a projected first round pick, hails from Hinsdale, IL, and is linemates with BC commits Will Smith and Ryan Leonard. Perreault's father, Yanic, had a long NHL career for the Toronto Maple Leafs, Phoenix Coyotes, Chicago Blackhawks, LA Kings, Montreal Canadiens, and Nashville Predators. The entire first line of the National Team Development Program is now committed to BC for next fall and all three players are slated to go in the first round of the 2023 NHL Draft. Additionally, BC has three other NTDP prospects who will also be picked at some point in the draft- forward Will Vote and defensemen Aram Minnetian and Drew Fortescue. 

Perreault has recorded 25 points in 14 games this season, which is good for second on the team, behind Smith. Leonard, who has missed the past couple of games, is third on the team with 20 points in 12 games. Neutral Zone described Perreault, who they ranked as 4.5/5 star prospect, as a “smaller forward who plays with good offensive skills and vision. Perreault has long legs but is a fairly balanced skater. He shows good vision and awareness with his playmaking ability.” Neutral Zone had Perreault ranked as the 9th best player in his age group. Puck Preps had Perreault rated as a 5 star player and 16th in the world for his age group- for clarity purposes, the Puck Prep rankings include players from other countries who won’t play NCAA hockey, so take that for what it’s worth. Neutral Zone sticks to mostly NCAA prospects. As I posted yesterday, The Athletic had Perreault going at #21 in their latest mock draft. 

This is a massive, massive get for BC as all of the big time programs were in on Perreault. I was thinking about this earlier tonight- on paper, next year’s recruiting class is perhaps the best BC has had in twenty-plus years. Obviously, the 2018 class had three first rounders of its own with Newhook, Boldy, and Knight, but the combination of skill and depth in this class is remarkable. BC has been lucky enough to land a few star-studded classes- the aforementioned 2018 class, 2015 (White, Wood, Fitzgerald, and for five seconds Bracco), 2014 (Tuch, Sanford, Hanifin, and for zero seconds Milano), 2013 (Demko, Santini, McCoshen, Cangelosi, Fitzgerald), 2009 (Kreider, Dumoulin, Whitney) were all outstanding, but the class of 2023, at least on paper, probably tops them all. Obviously, I am basing this off of expectations before any of these players actually ever stepped foot on campus (and in the case of Milano and Bracco, they just jumped ship on everyone)- things will change once these guys actually start playing college hockey and who knows where the chips will fall. 

Like I said in my tweet, I have no idea how this season will finish up- it could go well, it could go downhill. Whatever happens, I could not be more excited about where this program is at going forward. You would be hard pressed to find any team in college hockey that has recruited as well as BC has as of late and with this type of talent coming in, I feel very confident that more trophies will find their way to Conte Forum sooner rather than later.