Will Zellers scored 44 goals as a USHL rookie last season. (Photo courtesy of Green Bay Gamblers)

If anyone deserved a week or so away from the rink to relax and recharge after a long season, it was Will Zellers of the Green Bay Gamblers.

But Zellers didn’t grow into the player he is by taking time off.

Just a few days after his USHL season ended in mid-April, the 5-11, 170-pound winger was back on the ice working on his game and looking ahead to Boston Bruins development camp, starting on June 30.

“I’m not a big take-a-break guy. I like putting the work in and getting right after it,” said Zellers over the phone last week.

That drive to get better is paying off for the 19-year-old winger from Maple Grove, Minn., who will be a freshman at North Dakota in 2025-26.

Acquired by the Bruins from Colorado in March as part of the Charlie Coyle/Casey Mittelstadt trade, the speedy, skilled Zellers immediately upgraded Boston’s prospect pool.

Consider what Zellers, drafted in the third round by the Avs in 2023, accomplished as rookie last season:

*** He torched the USHL for a league-leading 44 goals in 52 games

*** He was named USHL Player of the Year, USHL Forward of the Year and was All-USHL First Team.

*** He earned USA Hockey’s Junior Player of the Year Award.

“His goal-scoring ability is the best I’ve ever been around and I played with Anders Lee here in Green Bay,” said Gamblers coach Patrick McCadden. “It’s uncanny the way he can score.  He can just find the hole and put the puck there, It’s pretty special.

“I kept waiting for him to hit the wall and he just never did. It was incredible how he continued to score consistently over the course of the season.”

On March 7, Zellers was at his billet house preparing for a Gamblers game and watching the Minnesota state high school tournament with teammate Aidan Park when he got word from his adviser that a trade might be in the works.

“I thought he was talking about the USHL for a second. I was like, the trade deadline was done already,” Zellers said.

“I ended up getting a call from (Don Sweeney) a little bit after that.”

Zellers took the news in stride.

“I’ll always be grateful to Colorado. They made a lifelong dream come true for me. It’s every kid’s dream to get drafted. I also understand it’s a business. It’s about winning,” he said.

“To get traded to an Original Six team like Boston is pretty exciting, just knowing that they wanted me at this young of an age. It was pretty special to get that call and hear the excitement on their end that they wanted me that badly.”

Zellers is acquainted with Boston. He committed to Boston University in 2022 before switching to North Dakota a year later, and he played at the Bruins’ Warrior Arena several times while attending Shattuck St. Mary’s, the Minnesota prep school.

“I love the City of Boston. It’s great. The fans are very passionate and very driven. Boston checks all the boxes,” he said.

Zellers attended Colorado’s development camp last summer but stayed off the ice because of an injury.

He’s excited about Bruins camp.

“I’m looking forward to meeting a bunch of the other draft picks and other affiliated players. That’s one of the best parts about hockey, the relationships that you build. And I just want to kind of pick every coach’s brain. This will be a good learning opportunity for me,” he said.

Among others at the camp, Zellers knows fellow Minnesotan Beckett Hendrickson, drafted by the Bruins in the fourth round in 2023, and he played against Dean Letourneau, Boston’s first rounder a year ago, while at Shattuck.

“He’s an unreal player, a big kid with a lot of potential. It will be cool learning from those guys and hearing what they have to say about college hockey,” Zellers said.

A few days after development camp ends on July 3, Zellers will head to North Dakota to begin his freshman year. He’ll be taking an English class and a science class during the summer session.

“It’s great how they have you ease into college, the academic part of it. They give you every tool to be a great student,” Zellers said.

The UND hockey program is known, of course, for developing players who go on to NHL careers.

“They have one of the best track records in all of college hockey, putting guys through to the next level, all different types of players. They’ve had skill guys from Jonathan Toews all the way down to some grinders like Rocco Grimaldi or Drake Caggiula,” said Zellers.

“It doesn’t matter what type of player you are, they will give you every tool you need to get to the next level, which is ultimately the dream.”

There was a coaching change at North Dakota after last season as highly respected coach Brad Berry, who guided the Fighting Hawks to the NCAA championship in 2016, was replaced by longtime assistant Dane Jackson.

Zellers is on board with the new staff.

“I trust Jacks. He’s a great coach and an even better mentor off the ice. I went (to Grand Forks) a couple of weeks ago just to talk to the new coaches,” he said.

In Zellers, Jackson and his staff are getting a player who is self-aware and motivated to do what it takes to get better, according to McCadden.

“He’s very grounded, especially for a player of his caliber. It allowed me to coach him the way I needed to coach him. You get a lot of high-end players like that who think they know better. They don’t want to hear it, necessarily, when they’re not going well,” he said.

“That’s probably what stands out the most about Will, his coachability, in taking criticism in good faith. Getting better and understanding it’s not always perfect. I had the freedom with Will to be hard on him if I needed to be, not that it was a frequent occasion, but there were definitely a couple of times with him.

“That’s kind of a coach’s dream, when you have a player that is as talented as he is and when you need to get on him, you need to coach him, that he takes to coaching.”

His determination to keep improving is a subject that comes up often in conversation with Zellers.

“I wasn’t always the best player growing up. I mean, I could always score goals, make plays, but I was never on those top teams. I had a drive to become a better player, be a guy teams rely on and teams want,” Zellers said.

“Doing something every day to better myself is a big thing, whether it’s on the ice, working on my stride, or even on a Sunday night, I got no skate or anything, just shooting pucks. You’ll never be a perfect hockey player but chasing that perfection is the best part of it.”

One player that Zellers has paid a lot of attention to is North Dakota born Jackson Blake, who stepped into the Carolina Hurricanes’ lineup in 2024-25 after two outstanding seasons in Grand Forks.

“He has been a guy I’ve watched growing up, starting at Eden Prairie (Minn.) High School. He was kind of the same build as me. Not the biggest guy.  Five-eleven, maybe six foot, around 180 pounds. He’s been a player I’ve loved to watch and tried to pull parts of his game,” said Zellers.

All things considered, it would work out nicely for the Bruins if Zellers’ timeline to reach the NHL matches Blake’s.

“Will’s a special player. Special kid, too. He’s on the right track. Boston got a good one,” McCadden said.

The Bruins acquired Will Zellers from Colorado at the trade deadline. (Photo courtesy of Green Bay Gamblers)