Laurentian's Llorca ready for OUA playoffs after suiting up for French national team

When you associate sports and the country of France several things come to mind.

Soccer and chants of "Allez les Bleus!" is probably near the top of the list, as are the red clay tennis courts of Roland Garros and the French Open, the grinding climbs of the Tour De France and skiing in the French Alps.

More likely than not, hockey does not make the list.

It would be understandable then if you did a double take while scanning down the Laurentian Voyageurs men's hockey roster:

Vincent Llorca – Defence – Le Mont-Dore, France

Unlike so many of his teammates and opponents who hail from hockey-crazed locales across the province and country, Llorca is from a small town in France about 450km south of Paris.

"My dad is Canadian and grew up playing hockey so he put me on skates when I was about two years old," said Llorca. "Because of the time difference I couldn't really watch NHL games, but we'd visit family and friends (in Canada) at least once a year and my dad took me to my first game at the Bell Centre (in Montreal) when I was very young."

Now in his second year with the Voyageurs, Llorca is captain of the team and has developed into one of the premier defenceman in the conference. He truly put his name on the map when he set a school record for a defenceman, scoring five goals in Laurentian's 7-6 win against Laurier on Nov 1. The five-goal outburst was sandwiched between two games in which he recorded three assists, totaling 11 points on 13 of his team's goals in a three-game stretch.

"I don't think I ever even had a hat-trick before that," said Llorca. "It was a wild game. Every time I shot the puck it seemed to go in, so I just shot a lot more."

Llorca finished tied for second in OUA for goals by a defenceman with eight, and added 13 assists for 21 points in 26 games, while leading his squad to a fourth-place finish and playoff berth in OUA's East Division.

His strong play did not go unnoticed.

A former member of the France national junior team, Llorca was called up to play in a two-game International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) friendly series for the senior national team against Slovenia on Dec. 19-20.

The games took place in France, giving his family the rare opportunity to come watch him play, and despite losing 6-2 and 4-0, Llorca played a regular shift both games, finishing with no points and a respectable -2 rating.

"It was a good experience," he said. "It's another level of hockey that is hard to get used to. It's a step faster, so you have to make decisions faster every time. Playing on Olympic-sized ice was an adjustment, I sort of lost the feel for it playing in Canada."

Hockey is not the easiest sport to pursue growing up in France. According to the IIHF website, France, with a population of 66.2 million, has 18,211 registered hockey players and 135 indoor arenas. While this may seem like a lot, consider that Finland, a country with 5.2 million people, has 73,682 registered players and 260 indoor rinks.

(Saving you a trip to Google, Canada has 2,631 indoor rinks and 721,504 registered players.)

"There's not that many clubs in France that play at a high level, maybe two or three, so I moved away from my hometown after high school to play for one of them. It made a big difference."

The sport, though, is growing in France, especially as the national team has begun to build a reputation as giant slayers, knocking off Russia at the 2013 IIHF World Championship and Canada at the 2014 tournament. The roster also lays claim to some notable NHL players, including Antoine Roussel (Dallas Stars), Pierre-Édouard Bellemare (Philadelphia Flyers), Stephane De Costa (Ottawa Senators), and former Montreal Canadiens and Chicago Blackhawks starting goalie Cristobal Huet. No NHLers were involved in the France vs. Slovenia game, though.

Llorca went on to play occasionally for professional teams in France before coming to Canada at 19 to play Jr. A hockey for the Nepean Raiders in the 2011-12 season. He spent two years with Nepean before beginning at Laurentian, and has slowly but surely adjusted to life in Canada.

"At the beginning, because of the (language) I didn't always understand what guys were doing. It was an adjustment but I had good billets and eventually started to understand things better," he said.

One part of the Canadian culture he enjoyed immediately, though, was how much hockey is sewn into the fabric of everyday life.

"There are a lot of people at the games and everywhere you go you can talk about hockey and everyone knows about it – it's different than what I was used to. (Hockey) is just as big as soccer (in France). There, people just go and play soccer with friends in their free time, here it's hockey."

It has always been a dream for Llorca to suit up for France at a major international tournament, and he also hopes to continue playing hockey once his OUA career is finished, but for the moment he is focused on his studies – he is a mechanical engineering student – and helping the Voyageurs make a deep playoff run.

Laurentian opens their Quest for the Cup tonight as they travel to Kingston to take on the Queen's Gaels in the opening game of a best-of-three series.