Canucks in on Aston-Reese
By Zach Laing
7 years agoSet to turn 23 years old this August, Zach Aston-Reese has made a name for himself playing for Northeastern University.
Over the course of his 145 game NCAA career, Aston-Reese has scored goals and tallied 82 assists, for a total of 148 points. This past season, he scored 31 goals and 32 assists for 63 points in only 38 games.
He led the NCAA in goals (31), points (63), and shorthanded goals (4).
Now, it appears that the young man is looking for an NHL contract and has quite a number of teams chasing him down. According to Ryan Kennedy of The Hockey News, as many as 15 teams are showing interest in the “power forward [who] puts up points [and] works hard.”
Aston-Reese has been described as a a true 200-foot player.
“He’s a complete player, a 200-foot complete player,” his coach Jim Madigan says. “Each year he’s worked on parts of his game to get better, and a lot of it’s been on the offensive side of it with his shot and stick skills, but he works at it, and that’s why he’s gotten better. I mean he works at shooting after practice, participating in the goaltender sessions twice a week, so when you do that over the course of four years, good things are going to happen because you’ve worked on your game.”
The Canucks have strong ties to the NCAA right now. Prospects Thatcher Demko, Brock Boeser, Adam Gaudette, William Lockwood, Chris Tanev and Troy Stetcher all played, or are currently playing in the NCAA.
Not a bad repertoire of players coming from the college ranks as they all are showing promise in their development.
If the Canucks were able to pick up Aston-Reese, he would be a welcome addition to a prospect cupboard that is beginning to fill up nicely for the Canucks. The work they did at the deadline coincides with that, as they were able to swing deals to bring in guys like Jonathan Dahlen and Nikolay Goldobin,
What the scouts say
He’s a smart 200-foot kind of a guy. He doesn’t have a ton of size, but he plays bigger. He’s heavy on pucks, he’s responsible, he’s diligent, he works hard along the walls and he goes to the dirty areas and he’s got some jam. The offense has really come up in the last couple of seasons, especially this season, that’s what’s getting a lot of people’s attentions, but the foundation is there. – Kirk Luedeke, Red Line Report
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