NHL prospect suspended after allegedly jabbing fan with stick at Olympiques game
Guy Quenneville | CBC News | Posted: February 13, 2023 9:00 AM | Last Updated: February 15, 2023
QMJHL still mulling how many games Zachary L'Heureux will sit out
- UPDATE | The league announced Feb. 15 L'Heureux is suspended 10 games.
- 'The player's gesture which occurred following the game simply cannot be tolerated,' it said.
The Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (QMJHL) has indefinitely suspended a Halifax Mooseheads player — and an NHL first-round draft pick — after he allegedly jabbed a teenaged fan with his stick following a game last week in Gatineau, Que.
Last Wednesday, the Gatineau Olympiques defeated the visiting Mooseheads in a shootout.
Olympiques fan Holden Coulter, 16, of Blackburn Hamlet said he was among a group of people who were standing, cheering and booing at ground level after the victory.
Coulter said he yelled out "Mooseheads suck!" before left-winger Zachary L'Heureux, 19, stuck out his stick and "started jabbing at us" as he got off the ice.
"I had to back away or else he would have probably gotten me better," Coulter said.
8 previous suspensions
While Coulter said he was not hurt, he and his mother Stephanie told CBC they were speaking out in order to get the incident, the latest in a series of suspensions for L'Heureux, on the record.
"I'm not looking to tear the organization down," Holden Coulter said of the Mooseheads, adding that L'Heureux should be forced to sit out at least eight QMJHL games given his record of prior infractions.
According to league records, L'Heureux has been suspended nine times in three seasons (including last week's incident) for everything from high sticking to fighting on the ice. He's been benched for a total of 27 games.
"The important thing is that he gets on track and stops being such a hothead on the ice and now at ... fans," Coulter said.
"He has a promising future ... It's just important that he get his head in the game."
No timeline on latest punishment
CBC reached out to L'Heureux on Facebook, as well as both the Mooseheads and the NHL's Nashville Predators, which signed L'Heureux to a three-year, entry-level contract in July 2021.
L'Heureux and the Predators did not immediately reply, while a spokesperson for the Mooseheads said via email the team would not comment "out of respect for the process while the QMJHL determines a length of suspension."
The QMJHL's announcement on Friday said L'Heureux's suspension was indefinite, adding that a disciplinary committee would review evidence over the weekend and announce their decision "at a later date."
"I don't have a clear timeline yet from them," league spokesperson Maxime Blouin said Sunday via email.
The league initially told Radio-Canada it would not discipline L'Heureux, but reversed course after video footage of the incident surfaced.
'Never had anything physical'
The Coulters said they have been Olympiques season ticket holders for over a decade, and Holden's sister Olympia is even named after the team.
"We're fairly high on the 'crazy fan' scale," Stephanie Coulter said, with her son adding that hockey has been a comforting culture "to indulge ourselves in" since he was three years old.
But the family has never experienced anything like last Wednesday, she said.
"Sometimes words are exchanged," she said. "But we've never had anything physical."