Nutmeg State Hockey Project #7: Scott Lachance

Defenseman from Bristol was an All-Star in 1997

Here’s a fun trivia question: who is Connecticut’s highest-drafted NHL player?

If you’ve read the other articles in this series, you may remember that Brian Leetch was picked 9th overall and Craig Janney 13th in the same draft, back when US-trained players were just starting to be acknowledged as high-level prospects. Janney wasn’t the only Nutmegger to go 13th overall; so did Ron Hainsey and Spencer Knight. Hugh Jessiman was taken 12th in the stacked 2003 draft, as many Rangers fans will be quick to remind you.

Max Pacioretty, Tage Thompson, and Panthers prospect Mackie Samoskevich were picked later on Day 1. Chris Clark, Jonathan Quick, and the brothers Drury were picked after the first round. Nick Bonino and Cam Atkinson were selected way after round 1.

Nobody in the history of Connecticut youth hockey has been drafted as high as Scott Lachance. Even with the advent of the National Team Development Program and USA Hockey becoming an undeniable global power, no one has even come all that close, and that doesn’t appear to be changing anytime soon.

Lachance was a solid enough defender to skate in over 800 games in the National Hockey League, mostly playing on bad teams and killing a lot of penalties. Even as a prospect he was never viewed to have a great offensive skillset, and the advent of the Dead Puck Era wouldn’t help him develop one. Relative to his draft position, he never became the star or the elite shutdown defenseman that some had expected him to be. But he did play over a decade at the game’s highest level, has stuck around the NHL long after his retirement, and ended up with a couple of notable, if surprising moments that have immortalized him to a certain segment of hockey fans.

The story of Scott Lachance starts with his family. His father, Guy, was born in the most rabid of hockey markets, Quebec, and played the sport through high school after his family moved to Maine. Guy became a construction worker, and the Lachances moved around to accommodate his work. Scott was born on October 22, 1972, when his parents were living in Charlottesville, Virginia. But the family soon returned to New England, finally settling in Bristol, Connecticut before their middle son started school.

Bristol is a city of around 60,000 people (as of the 2020 census) located between Hartford and Waterbury. No matter where in the country you grew up, I know you, the reader, have heard of Bristol, because it is the home of ESPN’s corporate offices and studio facilities. Like many of Connecticut’s cities, it has a history in a particular industry (this particular one being clockmaking) and became more of a working-class area after the industry started to falter.

Bristol has three high schools—two public, one Catholic—but none of them offer varsity hockey. Though there are many talented athletes who hail from there, it’s not a place you’d imagine a high-level hockey player coming out of at this point in time. But the three Lachance boys learned to love the sport in that city through their father, who built a rink in their backyard. The youngest son, Bob, would win a national championship in college, get drafted by the St. Louis Blues, and play the better part of a decade in the minors and in Europe.

But it was the middle kid who really stood out on the ice. Scott—a childhood fan of the Philadelphia Flyers—excelled on the youth teams coached by his father, and received the opportunity to play at the famed Quebec International Pee-Wee Tournament in both 1985 and 1986 with the Hartford Jr. Whalers. At age 14, he was noticed by former NHL player Gary Dineen, who ran the Springfield Pics junior program. The Pics were quickly becoming the top youth organization for players from Western Massachusetts and central Connecticut, and would remain that way into the early 21st century.

Dineen—a cousin of Whalers legend Kevin—convinced Guy to let Scott, who was just enrolling at St. Paul Catholic High School, skate for the Pics junior team, with and against players as old as 20. By the time Lachance finished high school, he was a dominant two-way defenseman in the New England junior circuit who modeled his game after Ray Bourque, and had his pick of college offers. Though previous Connecticut-bred players Leetch and Janney, as well as Pics alum Bill Guerin, had gone to Boston College, Lachance chose the other side of the famed Green Line Rivalry: Boston University.

The 1990–91 BU Terriers closely resembled some of today’s marquee programs in both makeup and output. They were driven by their top line of future NHL captains Tony Amonte, Shawn McEachern, and Keith Tkachuk, with both wingers being underclassmen. There were 11 future NHLers in all on the team. They employed a strategy of the best defense being a good offense, scoring the most goals in program history to that point but also giving up their share of crooked numbers on the scoreboard. Despite that, Lachance was a steady presence on the back end. He was profiled in newspapers and highly regarded by NHL scouts looking at the upcoming draft for his defensive ability, and held his own on the offensive end as well, finishing third among BU defensemen in scoring behind two older teammates despite only playing 31 games.

And when the games mattered, they won. They put up eight goals in the Beanpot final. They won the Hockey East title in a thrilling overtime finish against Maine. The Terriers made it all the way to the national championship game against another loaded offensive team, the Northern Michigan Wildcats. The 1991 final is one of the wildest title games I’ve ever watched, with both teams holding three-goal leads at one point. Lachance helped tie the game at 7 in the final minute with a one-handed diving poke to David Sacco for a primary assist. Both teams had their chances in overtime, but Northern Michigan came away with the victory in the third ten-minute period.

NHL Central Scouting listed Lachance second in their rankings for the 1991 Draft, only behind generational talent Eric Lindros, but it was understood he could be taken anywhere between second and fourth. Quebec selected Lindros against his very public wishes. Expansion team San Jose took scoring winger Pat Falloon second, and New Jersey picked a more offensive-minded defenseman third in Scott Niedermayer. New York Islanders general manager Bill Torrey was thrilled to have Lachance fall to him, and turned down a trade offer from the Whalers, who badly wanted the hometown kid. Torrey selected the blueliner with the fourth pick, one spot above where New Jersey had chosen Guerin two years prior.

Lachance would not return to college for his sophomore season, but did not immediately turn professional either. He set his sights on the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France. Olympic coach Dave Peterson openly sought out an older group among his defense and goaltenders, believing inexperience had cost the team four years earlier. But that didn’t end up hurting Lachance in the long run. He had proven himself with Team USA at the U20 level, being named to the All-Star Team at the 1991 World Juniors and leading the American defense group in scoring as they won the bronze medal in 1992. When it came time for the final Olympic cuts, the kid from Bristol had made the roster as the team’s youngest player, joining his college teammates McEachern and Tkachuk.

Lachance was tasked with plenty of responsibility in Albertville, though his final stats would show a single assist on the scoresheet. His team would make it through the first round undefeated, with the Swedes coming back to force a tie in the final preliminary contest. The US did not get much scoring depth outside of their top two lines and advanced on the outstanding play of star goalie Ray LeBlanc. Eventually, a couple of more talented squads would end their run. The semifinal against the Unified Team—the former Soviet countries—was tied at 2 until the Americans got into penalty trouble late in the third period. In the bronze-medal game against Czechoslovakia, they never had a chance. Of the post-Miracle on Ice, pre-NHL Olympic teams, 1992 would be the best result for the American entry.

With an impressive Olympic showing, members of the team started signing in the NHL, and Lachance joined that group, inking his first deal with the Islanders a few days after the bronze medal game. He suited up for his first contest on March 3, 1992, and would score his first NHL goal in his second game, the equalizer of a 4-4 tie in Chicago. He would add four assists and a +13 rating in the 17 games he played that year.

The Islanders were far removed from their dynasty years of a decade prior, but they were climbing back into playoff contention after trading Pat LaFontaine in 1991. Pierre Turgeon led the way offensively, and legendary coach Al Arbour settled the team’s penalty kill from their league-worst mark in the previous season. Lachance, playing alongside the experienced Uwe Krupp, had what would end up being the best offensive season of his career, with seven goals (including the only shorthanded tally he’d score in the NHL) and 24 points. The Islanders would go on a surprise run to the Eastern Conference Finals, but unfortunately, Lachance had to miss it after spraining his wrist in the third-to-last game of the regular season.

Though he did need surgery to fix his wrist, Lachance was fully healthy by the start of the 1993–94 season. The Islanders had been excited by the progress their young defenseman had made on the offensive end and had high expectations for his second full campaign. Lachance would receive further notoriety when a photo of a check he put on the Chicago Blackhawks’ Bryan Marchment would be used as the title screen of the wildly popular video game NHL ‘94.

The Isles wouldn’t be too far off the previous year’s pace, though they only squeaked into the playoffs by a point over Torrey’s expansion Florida Panthers and scoring numbers were down for basically the entire team. That included Lachance, who finished with a stat line of exactly three goals and 11 assists for the first of what would be three times in his career. He played fewer minutes than he had as a rookie, and would end up being healthy scratched for Game 3 of the first-round playoff series against the New York Rangers. Not that he was the problem in any way; the Islanders would score just three goals in the entire series, which the Blueshirts took in a sweep.

Getting destroyed by their hated rivals and watching them break their very long Stanley Cup drought would only be the beginning of the Islanders’ problems in the 1990s, however. Arbour retired for a second time in June of 1994 and the start of the 1994–95 season would be delayed until January because of the first NHL lockout. Lachance returned to the form he’d shown in his rookie season, finishing second on the New York blueline in scoring. Of course, he did miss almost two months of the season with a broken ankle. The injuries to Lachance and Darius Kasparaitis essentially ended the team’s season, and GM Don Maloney would attempt to commence a rebuild by trading away many of their best players.

The Islanders would drastically change their look for the 1995–96 season beyond just the personnel on and off the ice (the latter included head coach Mike Milbury taking over as GM in December)—you probably know it as the Fisherman era. For Lachance, it was pretty similar to the previous year: some time missed due to injury, 13 points on the season, the team near the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings. He did get to finish the season on a high note, however, returning to Team USA for the first time in four years as a member of the IIHF World Championship team. The result in Vienna, Austria would be better for Lachance than the results on Long Island. A shorthanded overtime goal by Brian Rolston against Russia secured a bronze medal for the Americans, the first medal of any color at this event since 1962.

In 1996–97, the Islanders again finished with the second-worst record in the Eastern Conference and Lachance again finished with around the same point total. But the year was a happy one for the defenseman, even though Milbury had dangled his name as part of an unsuccessful attempt to land Jeremy Roenick from the Chicago Blackhawks. He finally stayed healthy for the entire season and emerged as the reliable top-four defensive-minded guy that the team expected him to be after his rookie season, significantly reducing his time spent in the penalty box. In a further surprise move, after teammate Ziggy Pálffy sustained a minor injury in January of 1997, Lachance was chosen as the Islanders’ All-Star Game representative for the first and only time in his career. To date, he is one of just five NHLers raised in the Nutmeg State to play in the midseason event.

Lachance would skate again for Team USA in the IIHF World Championship in 1997, though the Americans fell short of repeating on the podium. He re-upped in New York for two more years, and had a similar statistical season in 1997–98, though without the All-Star nod. The Islanders were still not close to playoff contention, though they weren’t downright awful as they had been in the three previous seasons. It was becoming evident that the bump in his offensive numbers was not coming. Being a top-5 pick but not living up to those expectations can be one of the hardest spots to be in as an NHLer, even if you’re a 20-minute-a-night defenseman.

And in 1998–99, his luck started to run out. He ran afoul of Milbury and new coach Bill Stewart with his play—on multiple occasions, shots from opposing players deflected off Lachance and into the Islander net. He also found himself scratched for a few games, with Milbury singling him out to the media. With an expiring contract, he was dealt to Montreal two weeks before the trade deadline for a third-round pick.

Things did go better once Lachance became a Canadien; he scored a goal in his debut and was back to his minute-eating, penalty-killing ways pretty quickly. When the Habs missed the playoffs, he joined the national team for his third and final IIHF World Championship. The Americans finished sixth, a more welcome result after they nearly got relegated the year prior. Montreal re-signed Lachance in August, but his one full season in his father’s home province would mirror some of his mid-’90s campaigns. He missed games with injury, and during the stretch run, he wasn’t always seeing ice time. The Canadiens would narrowly miss the postseason.

As an unrestricted free agent in the summer of 2000, the 27-year-old chose the other side of Canada, signing with the Vancouver Canucks. General manager Brian Burke viewed him as a complementary presence to former first overall pick Ed Jovanovski, a physical two-way guy about to make his first All-Star appearance. Outside of the 1992–93 Islanders, these early-aughts Canucks teams—fun ones by Dead Puck Era standards—would be the best NHL clubs that Lachance would skate for. Though he was a +5 in 2000–01, Vancouver had a hard time keeping the puck out of their own net and barely made the playoffs. For Lachance, though, it would be his first postseason appearance since 1994. Facing the top-seeded Colorado Avalanche, the eventual Stanley Cup champion, the Canucks lost three tight games and then a lopsided Game 4 to end the series—finishing without their steady blueliner, who sustained an injury in the second period of Game 2.

The Canucks scored more goals than any NHL team in 2001–02—Lachance had one of the 254, on January 12th against Carolina—but below-average goaltending left them as the 8-seed again. Lachance’s +15 was by far the highest plus-minus rating of his career, and was third in average time on ice behind his more heralded teammates, Jovanovski and Mattias Öhlund. For his play as an “unsung hero”, the team’s Booster Club gave him the Fred Hume Award at the end of the season. Facing another Presidents’ Trophy winner in the first round, Vancouver actually took the first two games in Detroit, with Lachance scoring the eventual winner in Game 2. But the series started to unravel when Nicklas Lidström famously scored from center ice against Dan Cloutier in Game 3, and the Red Wings closed it out in six on their way to a Stanley Cup.

Having rehabilitated his reputation, Lachance had interest in free agency in 2002, and agreed to a four-year contract with the Columbus Blue Jackets worth $2 million a season. The Jackets had only played their first game as a franchise two years earlier and were going through the growing pains you would expect of an expansion team in that era. Lachance was expected to provide defensive help, but his two seasons in Ohio were unhappy ones. Columbus was among the worst teams in the league, and their defense wasn’t keeping them in games. After the season-long lockout concluded in 2005, Lachance’s contract was bought out.

Lachance spent the 2005–06 season in Switzerland, with the Kloten Flyers. His North American style of play meant he took more penalties than he was accustomed to, but did help them upset top-seeded SC Bern in the first round of the playoffs. He was approached by the New Jersey Devils to try out during the 2006 preseason, and after not making the team, joined their AHL affiliate in Lowell, Massachusetts.

Playing his first minor-league game a couple days before his 34th birthday, Lachance made a good impression on the Devils organization. But his back problems started piling up, and by January he was no longer healthy enough to take the ice. He stuck it out with the Lowell Devils for the rest of the season in the press box, then elected to retire.

Upon his retirement, Lachance settled in the Lowell area and was hired by the New Jersey Devils as an amateur scout. In 2019, he was promoted to head U.S. scout. When he wasn’t scouting, he had time to coach his sons’ youth hockey teams. And two of his sons have had the opportunity to carry on his legacy on the ice beyond the high school level.

Oldest son Jake played defense at Division III Wesleyan University in his father’s home state, and I mention this at least partially because I got to broadcast one of his games last year. Middle son Shane is a winger, and was selected by the Edmonton Oilers in the sixth round of the 2021 NHL Draft. He captained the USHL’s Youngstown Phantoms to the Clark Cup championship in 2023, and has accepted a hockey scholarship to Boston University for the fall, joining his dad, uncle, and grandfather, legendary BU coach Jack Parker, in the Terrier family.

Scott Lachance is the highest-drafted hockey player in Connecticut’s history. Though his NHL career was largely unspectacular, his 819 games in the league rank sixth among Constitution State-raised players—only behind Leetch, Hainsey, Drury the younger, Pacioretty, and Bonino. Only Leetch, Quick, Atkinson, and Pacioretty have matched Lachance’s feat of playing in an All-Star Game. What I also find cool is that of the 34 players on this list (and this number likely will be higher by the time I finish this project), only Lachance, Thompson, and Leetch have participated in regular-season NHL games as teenagers, and neither of the latter two played anywhere near Lachance’s total of 24 games as a 19-year-old.

Lachance remains one of the greatest blueliners this state has ever produced, and has had a career both during and after his playing days that most young athletes in America could only dream of. For over three decades, he has received a paycheck from a professional hockey team. Now, he gets to watch his sons play the sport his dad fell in love with as a boy in Quebec, and his own middle kid attempt to carry on the family name in hopes of becoming a pro in his own right.