If junior hockey fans across the country didn’t know who Jordan Dumais was to begin the season, they sure do now.
The second-year winger for the Halifax Mooseheads finished the regular season third in the QMJHL with 109 points, including 39 goals.
His impressive performance put the just turned 18-year-old as Halifax’s top point producer, and a surging prospect for the upcoming 2022 NHL Entry Draft this summer.
“I’m being biased, but I think he is,” said Mooseheads head coach Sylvain Favereau on if Dumais should go in the first round at July’s draft at the Bell Centre in Montreal. “He’s a goal scorer. He’s a pass-first kind of guy as well where he can make plays. He’s the guy that leads his line”
Despite the buzz now surrounding him and the upcoming draft, the Quebec-born Dumais remains focused on getting the job done on the ice. The Mooseheads are set to take on the Acadie-Bathurst Titan in the first round of the playoffs, a series that starts Thursday in N.B.
“I mean they have a lot of skill, but I mean so do we,” said Dumais, who now holds the Mooseheads team record for most points by a 17-year-old. “We have a bunch too. So, at the end of the day, it’s going to be hard work and staying disciplined.”
Dumais is only the eighth player in Mooseheads’ franchise history to reach 100 points in a single regular season.
When it comes to the NHL draft, Dumais, who turned 18 on April 15, says he’s spoken with several teams already, but is keeping his focus on the QMJHL playoffs.
Dumais is ranked 73rd amongst North American skaters by NHL Central Scouting, putting him as a projected third-round selection. He was passed over to play in this year’s CHL/NHL top’s prospects game.
“The draft is the draft. I mean, obviously, we have a few more games and that’s all I can control honestly, those last few games,” Dumais said this week.
Dumais won’t say if he considers being taken in the first round as a goal. For him, he’s more focused on his continued development, and making whichever franchise takes him in the draft, is the right fit.
Favreau said there are several reasons why Dumais has flown “under the radar” by NHL Central Scouting. He said his high-scoring forward entered the QMJHL as a rookie after playing south of the border, meaning many people didn’t know about him. He also said his game has only recently skyrocketed, and maybe many NHL scouts had already ranked him as being outside the first round.
“He’s really the one leading the way, so I think he’ll have a strong NHL career at some point,” Favereau said.
Dumais knows his performance in the Mooseheads upcoming playoffs will be of high importance in determining where he gets selected in July at the draft.
“Teams will like to see how I play in the playoffs, obviously it’s a little more of a physical game and it’s a bit harder, so they’ll like to see how I adapt to that,” he said.
Favereau said against the favoured Titan, he thinks his team has peaked at the right time. Halifax goes into the series winners of seven-straight games.
“We’re going to have to be a pesky team, we’re going to have to work hard, and outcompete the opposition if we want a chance,” the coach said of the series. “Bathurst is a team that is stacked with talent and we’re the youngest team in the league. But as they say: ‘everything is played on the ice.”
Game 1 and 2 of the series goes Thursday and Friday in Bathurst. Game 3 will be in Halifax on Monday at 7 p.m.