Dave Randall saw the potential in Tommy Bleyl from a very young age.
His love of performing and his ability to showcase drills to other players. His high-arched feet, giving him a unique edge. His deep drive to make his skating as effective as possible. It was all there for the longtime hockey and skating coach to witness at his training rink on his Troy, N.Y., property.
"We came up with this concept of you can push the puck, you can pull a puck. You can move around a puck or the puck can move around you. We've got to get all these habits installed in the kids as young as possible," Randall, the Canadian-born founder of North American Hockey Systems Inc., said.
"Tommy was doing so good at skating when he went into his first stick lesson, he was doing things like pushing a puck while skating backwards on his backhand or his forehand. It was like nothing,
"We get other guys who are in high school and they try these drills and they can't even do them. He was six years old at the time. It's just hilarious to watch. He always likes to do everything to the extreme."
So while Bleyl may have caught the hockey world by surprise with his rapid rise up NHL draft boards this year, Randall had an inkling the slick-skating, six-foot defenceman from Schenectady, N.Y., near Albany, could open eyes in his first year in the CHL with Gardiner and Taylor MacDougall's Moncton Wildcats.
The same kid who scored 30 goals in his first 30-minute, cross-ice mite game at age six on Randall's rink put up historic numbers as an undrafted free agent in Canadian major-junior hockey, earning CHL and QMJHL rookie-of-the-year honours and the latter's defenceman-of-the year nod.
Now, he's projected to be first-round pick Friday in Buffalo after earning a fourth- or fifth-round grade near the start of the season by NHL Central Scouting. Sportsnet's Sam Cosentino had Bleyl 23rd in his draft rankings last week.
"He has a persistence factor that's pretty solid," Randall said of Bleyl, who had a QMJHL rookie record 81 points (13 goals, 68 assists) in 63 games for a team that lost in the league final this season.
"His belief he can do it is pretty strong."
After playing at Cushing Academy in Massachusetts last season, Bleyl was weighing whether to play for the Dubuque Fighting Saints of the USHL or the Wildcats, who had expressed interest after he went undrafted in the OHL (which has New York as its territory).
Pete Judge, a former member of the Dubuque scouting staff which had drafted Blyel the previous year, ended up joining Moncton's staff last year and gave a strong recommendation on the player to the MacDougalls.
On a visit to Moncton last summer, Bleyl took a car ride with veteran coach Gardiner MacDougall, who led the Wildcats to the QMJHL title in 2024-25 in his first full season in the league with his son Taylor as GM after a decorated career at the University of New Brunswick.
"I met coach Gardiner, and we went on a pretty long car ride together and he had a lot of awesome stories to tell," Bleyl, who turned 18 last December, said. "He just won us over and it was an excellent decision."
They clearly had a lot to talk about, as they ended up in Gardiner's home province of Prince Edward Island, nearly two hours away.
"I was meeting him after lunch and the next thing I knew, they were on the way to P.E.I. to get a little tour of the island," Taylor MacDougall recalled. "I think GMac worked his magic there."
Bleyl, who looks up to Montreal Canadiens blue-liner Mike Matheson as a good role model, presents major problems for his opponents with his skating.
It's no accident. While Randall said having high-arched feet like Bleyl is common for elite skaters, young Tommy developed his technique with hours and hours of practice.
"We do edge work that would be the equivalent of the best skaters you ever watch," Randall said. "We always equate it to the motorcyclist with the elbow on the ground and the knee on the ground and if you're not willing to lean like that, don't expect high-level hockey to work out for you. But Tommy always just loved this stuff, he thought it was the greatest."
Still, it takes more than being a strong skater to succeed in the MacDougalls' program.
Taylor said Bleyl always was looking for ways to improve after being a virtual unknown at the start of the season.
"It started with a really good standard. I think there were people sort of waiting for him to falter from that standard. He kind of consistently maintained his standard and gradually picked away at his game at the same time. His standard didn't really dip the entire year and he found ways to improve on it monthly.
"He'd add a little different element to his game, a little different element to his personality and his confidence as the season went. He played really good hockey for us all season long but also was able to continually improve all the facets of his game."
Bleyl, who strives to be a strong two-way defenceman, tied for third in the QMJHL with a plus-58 rating. Not bad for a guy who acknowledges he "wasn't even sure if I was going to get drafted or not" at the start of the season.
An important part of hockey is resetting goals as you develop. Bleyl now has his sights set on being picked on Night 1 of the draft.
"I'm not going to lie and say I would be absolutely unbothered (if he's not picked on the first night), but it would be slightly disappointing," Bleyl said.
Bleyl plans to return to Moncton next season before heading to Michigan State the following season.
While others have made the jump following the draft, Bleyl feels it will be "really beneficial" to spend another season playing for one of the top programs in the CHL.
Taylor MacDougall, of course, is thrilled Bleyl is returning. He thinks his blue-liner has a very bright future.
"He has elite mobility and elite escapability. He'll be a good skater at the NHL level, where that will be a difference maker for him. And his mindset ... he's a really, really competitive kid," MacDougall said.
"That's something you probably can't always see when you're looking from the stands, but he wants the puck in big moments. He wants to make a difference and often he's successful in doing that."
