“He is special. There aren’t many, so young, so good and so complete. »
The head coach of the Chicoutimi Saguenéens, Yanick Jean, is quick to compliment his young forward Maxim Massé.
“For me, it’s a no-brainer that it’s a first pick in the National League. »
At 16, Massé is having a thundering first season with the Saguenéens, a young team in full reconstruction. The young man, third overall pick at the last QMJHL auction, sits first in scoring among league rookies with 51 points in 50 games. His 25 goals make him his team’s top scorer and 23e of the league.
The head coach therefore has excellent reasons to speak of his player in this way. He mentions his qualities on skates: his sense of hockey, his consistency, his physique. But he insists above all on his “attitude off the ice”.
He is down to earth. He has a great quality: he is able to concentrate. He will work just as hard in practice if he scored three goals the day before. He is really in the present, and that means he is able to seek consistency.
Yanick Jean, head coach of the Chicoutimi Saguenéens
“You see that he has a very high maturity for a 16-year-old player,” he summarizes.
School hockey
We meet Maxim Massé at the Imperia Hotel in Saint-Eustache, where the Saguenéens have just arrived after more than four hours on the road for their confrontation against the Blainville-Boisbriand Armada.
Massé hasn’t had the typical career path of QMJHL players. In 1D secondary, he made the decision to evolve within the Preparatory School Hockey League (LHPS). He thus avoided having to live in a boarding house in Rivière-du-Loup, an hour and a quarter drive from the family home in Rimouski.
“I spoke with my parents and with the structure [des Albatros], and we agreed that the best option for me was to go play school in Mont-Joli. It’s 20 minutes from our house. »
“It’s a super good hockey league,” he notes. There are good players. […] I could arrive in the morning, have a French lesson, and then have two hours of hockey. I was going to do my math class at the end of the afternoon and I was going home. »
In the M15 Major, at the Mistral school, Massé scored 30 goals and 52 points in 24 games. The following year, however, he was sidelined for a full season due to the pandemic; a situation that could have had an impact on its development.
It was still rough, but we practiced almost every day at school. Despite everything, we managed to develop and improve. […] I took the opportunity to go train, practice my shooting at home, do small details.
Maxim Massé, on his time in the Major Preparatory School Hockey League M15
In 2021-2022, after three years of school hockey, Massé showed up at the Collège Notre-Dame Albatross camp, in the Quebec M15 AAA Hockey League.
“I took a leap,” he says. […] For a while, I was like, wow, what’s going on? But suddenly as the season started, I gained more and more confidence. In the end, it was going really well. My coach trusted me. »
It was going really well, yes, because in his only season in the U15 AAA, the forward scored 43 points in 40 games. The Sags were convinced. Even if the preliminary repechage lists placed Massé 14the rank, the Saguenay team made it their choice at 3e rank.
Immediate impact
The Saguenéens did “a lot of homework” before making their choice, according to the head coach. There were several meetings, round trips to Rivière-du-Loup because “as long as you haven’t met them, you don’t know what you’re dealing with”.
“We were convinced that he was our man. »
Yanick Jean suspected that his player would be able “to have good times this year”, he says. “But I never thought he would be able to get as much consistency as he did. »
He produced against first-line 19s and 20s. He’s produced against 19s and 20s on defense, who are the best two or three defensemen on their team. He did it night after night. And our record, it shows us that he did it the right way too. He didn’t do it by cheating.
Yanick Jean, head coach of the Chicoutimi Saguenéens
Jean compares Massé to one of his former players who enjoyed a fine career in the National League with the Vegas Golden Knights, Nicolas Roy.
“It’s a bit like the tracks he has to follow. Max, he will make points, as long as he wants. He will have to continue to be as involved defensively, to play as well on both sides as he does at the moment. »
Massé is like a fish in water in Chicoutimi. His success, he attributes to a combination of factors.
“I think a big part of my success is a mix of the fact that Yan trusts me, that I got into a good pension, that the guys have integrated us well. »
Naturally, the work has only just begun. The junior years, he recalls, “are good years”. So he wants to enjoy every day. If he appreciates the good words to him, his feet remain well anchored to the ground.
“I’m not the type to swell my head, if I can put it that way. I take it and I leave it. »