Bathurst’s O’Brien and co. tearing up the Q

The Acadie-Bathurst Titan have the hottest line in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.

Zach O’Brien, Stephane Trudeau and Matthew Bissonnette have combined to score 38 points in their team’s opening five games of the season, and it’s led to the Titan’s impressive 3-1-1-0 start. They have points on 17 of the Titan’s league-leading 26 goals so far this season.

“They are one of the best first lines in the league,” Titan head coach Eric Dubois said. “Not only in games. They are the hardest workers in practice, and their effort is there.”

O’Brien, 19, leads the league with fifteen points in five games. He’s paired that up with seven goals, enough for a share of the league lead with Victoriaville’s Philippe Maillet and Shawinigan’s Anton Zlobin.

“He’s a very hard worker,” Dubois said. “He works his butt off. You don’t have to motivate him.

“If the best work the hardest, then it sets a great example for the rest of the team. [O’Brien] has been giving us not only great offense but he’s been good defensively as well.

“[Red Wings head coach] Mike Babcock once said that coaching is easy when your best players are your best defensively as well as offensively. They set an example for the rest of the team to follow and the team follows suit. Zach and his line are those kinds of players for me.”

O’Brien was a Moncton Wildcats fourth round pick in the 2008 QMJHL draft. He never played a game for the Wildcats, who traded him to Rouyn-Noranda. After playing three games for the Huskies in the 2009-10 season, he was again traded, this time to the Titan, where he played four more games in the campaign. In the summer of 2010, he was given an invite to the San Jose Sharks’ rookie camp, but didn’t make the main camp roster.

Last season, he scored 68 points, with 29 goals, in 58 games, but no team called his name in the 2011 NHL Entry Draft, and no training camp invite came for the 5’10” forward.

The third-year QMJHL Newfoundlander is now taking his frustrations out on the league.

“I think he’s a little ticked off about not getting an invite,” Dubois said. “He’s been playing with a great amount of intensity since camp opened.”

Dubois added that O’Brien and his line help create matchup problems down the road for his Titan.

“This line is taking a lot of the load right now,” he said. “It takes the attention of the defence away from our other forwards. The other guys will add some offense soon, and it will give them good matchups to exploit.”

Dubois said that O’Brien will make a good pro as long as he keeps playing the way he can.

“He’s got excellent vision,” he said. “His hockey sense is great. He knows where to be and where to go.

“His skating and conditioning can improve for the pro game, and he’s putting in his time to do that, and he’s working hard on it. He is on his way in that sense. As well, we could see him competing a little more physically, not necessarily changing his game to throw hits everywhere, but to use his body a little more.

“As long as he keeps his play going, with his vision and his hockey sense, he’ll be a good