RALEIGH, N.C. — Joel L’Esperance was about to go to sleep when Stars assistant general manager Scott White called him Thursday night. It was his call to the NHL, an invitation to join the Stars in Raleigh the next day before making his NHL debut Saturday night against the Hurricanes in a 3-0 Dallas loss.
“I packed and then crawled into bed, and definitely took a while to fall asleep [with] my mind running everywhere,” L’Esperance said. “It’s pretty exciting, though.”
L’Esperance, the AHL’s leading scorer this season with 27 goals, played in his first NHL game on Saturday night, becoming the sixth player to debut for Dallas this season. He will also occupied the slot on the Stars’ second power-play unit.
He played 15:53 of ice time with one shot on goal, three attempts, two hits, a giveaway, a takeaway and a 2-for-4 showing on faceoffs.
L’Esperance, 23, is in his first professional season after four years at Michigan Tech.
“He’s a hard player, he’s really good below the tops of the circles offensively,” Stars coach Jim Montgomery said. “Very responsible, and a very hard-working young man. Talking to coach [Derek] Laxdal, he’s just raved about the young man’s attitude, his ability.
“He thinks he is a true finisher because he gets a lot of opportunities at that net-front. It’s something that will help us with something that’s been an inconsistency with us is being battle tough at the net-front and that’s a strength of his.”
L’Esperance is tied for fourth in the AHL with 11 power-play goals, and ranks 12th with 136 shots on goal.
L’Esperance is the latest attempt at an internal scoring solution for the Stars, who have already rolled through Hintz, Justin Dowling, Denis Gurianov and Erik Condra as AHL recalls. Those four players have combined for five goals and nine assists in 64 total NHL games.
He’ll also be the sixth Star to make his NHL debut this season, the second-most in the league. Hintz, Miro Heiskanen, Ben Gleason, Landon Bow and Gavin Bayreuther also made their NHL debuts this season.
“The first time you get called up, you’re excited, you just can’t wait to go,” Montgomery said. “That’s why it’s an exciting moment, you just let them [be] alone, just tell them ‘Have fun, go play, be hard.’ Later on, if it happens to him as often as it did to me, you come up and you understand your role. You know what you have to do to help the team specifically. You start to realize you might get, in my case, seven minutes and that seven minutes in important.”
Montgomery said assistant coach Stu Barnes talked with L’Esperance about Dallas’ faceoffs, which it handles differently than AHL affiliate Texas. Other minor differences in style of play: Dallas uses an aggressive 1-2-2 forecheck while Texas uses a 1-1-3. Texas does “a little more swarming than we do as far as our coverage” in the defensive zone.
“It’s hockey, so yeah, everything’s pretty similar,’ L’Esperance said. “But there’s a few system things that are a little bit different, but I think I’ll be all right.”
L’Esperance was supposed to start as a center, but played a handful of minutes at wing while Montgomery used 11 forwards and seven defensemen.
“I just feel like I’m more involved in the game in the middle of the ice,” L’Esperance said. “You get the puck more. I’m not afraid to play wing. I can do it, I think I have the capability to play wing. So whatever they need me to do, I’m willing to do that.”
L’Esperance said he would have some family in Raleigh for the game, including his wife Liana and his less than two-month old daughter Lyla.
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