BUFFALO -- A little more than a year ago, Guillaume Latendresse finished in the bottom five when the Montreal Canadiens' tested their players' speed in training camp. In the same skating test this year, Latendresse finished in the top five.
The on-ice difference was made in more than 35 hours of sessions the Canadiens' left winger had over the summer with Paul Lawson, a power-skating coach from Arnprior, Ont. But the real difference started in a meeting between Latendresse, Canadiens general manager Bob Gainey and head coach Guy Carbonneau at the end of last season.
From that meeting, Latendresse finally connected the dots from his arrival in the NHL three years ago as a 45th overall draft pick with great expectations to two lacklustre seasons of 16 goals each and diminishing ice time.
"We tried that earlier; we tried two years ago and he was supposed to do it," Carbonneau said of an earlier effort to persuade Latendresse to work on his game.
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"That's the thing when you're young and you come out of junior hockey. Everything was always a little easier and you think it's going to be like that for the rest of your career.
"But I think once you hit the NHL for real, you realize a lot of people put a lot of work into their games. Everybody is trying to get better. I think he realized that last year and this year he put the time in."
Latendresse put enough time in to find himself on the Canadiens' second line for last night's season-opener against the Buffalo Sabres with centre Saku Koivu and right winger Alex Tanguay, thanks to a groin injury to Christopher Higgins.
"This year is going to be important for me to show that I want more ice time, that I want to be a part of this team," Latendresse said after the Canadiens' morning skate at HSBC Arena.
"I knew I was a good player but I knew I had to work on some things."
Latendresse said Carbonneau and Gainey did not come down hard on him in the meeting. They just pointed out a few realities about how careers go in the NHL.
In his case, Latendresse's career was in a holding pattern at best. He was still young at 21 but he was not progressing.
While he was blessed with soft hands and a 6-foot-2, 229-pound frame, skating was the worst part of Latendresse's game. The new rules that made the NHL's version of hockey a much faster game arrived at the same time as Latendresse.
Latendresse considered the question of his stagnating ice time, and noticed there were other young phenoms in the Canadiens organization, like Max Pacioretty, their first-round draft pick in 2007 who almost made the team this year. He realized it was time to get to work.
"He sees the competition," Carbonneau said. "I don't think that three years ago, when he came up, that we had the depth we do now. Last year, he realized if he does not get better he would be playing on the fourth line again."
In his sessions with Lawson, Latendresse worked on his balance and technique. He also hit the weight room and gained five pounds. But he reduced his body fat and the net result was more speed.
He says he is not much faster overall from point A to point B than he was a year ago. The difference is in his explosiveness from a standing start.
Gainey and Carbonneau also told Latendresse he had to improve his defensive play in order to become more of a two-way player. Now he is quick enough to elude defencemen at one end of the ice and to cover them at the other.
"Defensively, right now I have half-second to one-second improvement on getting to the play," Latendresse said. "I was comfortable with my skating last year but I knew I had things to work on if I wanted a long career in the NHL.
"I don't want to just play three or four years. I want to play more so I knew I had to work."
Carbonneau is not ready to declare his young charge a finished product, although he is happy for now.
"He's not going to be a Guy Lafleur," the coach said. "But if he improves 5 to 10 per cent, with his skill and with his hands, he can beat the defencemen inside and be an effective scorer."
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