During the darkest time of year, the light turned on for Cameron Lizotte.

His Peterborough Petes had started December on a four-game losing slide and had been dealing with a string of suspensions and off-ice incidents which threatened to derail a promising season.

The team’s struggles prompted head coach Jody Hull to call out his players during a practice – an act which made an impression on Lizotte.

"The whole team was going through a tough time," recalled the 17-year-old defenceman from Falconbridge. "He was questioning our dedication and all that and I stepped up and told him, straight up, ‘I want to be a hockey player. I’m here to play hockey. I don’t know what you think, but I want to win games and I want to go somewhere with this. I’m not here just for the ride.’ "

Lizotte proved it, too, as the season went on, evolving from merely a promising prospect to a key member of Peterborough’s blueline corps.

The 6-foot-2, 195-pounder also emerged as one of the most punishing body-checkers in the entire OHL, no doubt raising his stock with big-league scouts who place a premium on fleet-footed, hard-hitting rearguards.

"During the second half of the season, I got more attention as my play progressed and I got more confidence in my game," said Lizotte, who finished the regular season with two goals and seven assists, along with 129 penalty minutes, in 67 games.

"It went well and I’m happy it turned out the way it did."

He certainly managed to impress his coach.

"Once he realized he wanted to be a hockey player and be serious at it, he made that commitment," Hull said. "It’s tough for guys at that age to do that, but he made that commitment and he’s a guy for us who brings a consistent work ethic from game to game and practice to practice. He had loads of character and determination. Some of those things are tough to teach and he has those great attributes.

"He’s the kind of guy the opposition doesn’t want to play against, because he plays the game hard and plays it the right way."

Lizotte, in turn, gives his coach credit for helping build his confidence during his second year of major junior hockey.

"He gave me a lot of opportunity and I started playing my rough, tough style and I really broke down my defensive zone coverage and all of our systems and it worked out well," Lizotte said.

He’s ranked 99th overall among North American skaters by NHL Central Scouting ahead of the 2015 NHL Entry Draft, to be held in Miami later this month.

But some scouts think he could be picked even sooner.

Longtime local evaluator Mark Seidel runs North American Central Scouting, which prepares a draft guide and ranks draft-eligible players. He has ranked Lizotte 98th overall, among both North American and European prospects, placing the local product near the top of the fourth round.

"Could he sneak into the third round? I think there’s a possibility of that," Seidel said. "We’ve probably got him higher than most do, but we certainly like his upside, but we’ll stand by our track record with some of the guys we’ve ranked higher than most have, who have turned out to be pretty good, solid prospects."

Among those is Tyler Bertuzzi, the Sudbury-born forward coming off a stellar season with the Guelph Storm – and who, perhaps unsurprisingly, Lizotte mentioned as an inspiration.

NACS ranked Bertuzzi near the middle of the second round for the 2013 NHL draft, much higher than many had him, but close to where the Detroit Red Wings ended up selecting him, 58th overall.

"A lot of people thought we were nuts, but he turned out to be pretty good," Seidel said.

He believes Lizotte has a lot of the qualities that bumped Bertuzzi up the draft board two years ago.

"The reason we had him ranked almost higher than anybody is because he plays so hard, because he played every shift as hard as he could," Seidel said. "And that’s Cameron Lizotte’s calling card at this point in time. He blocks shots, he’ll fight, he hits. He does a lot of things that are basically effort-related and finding a guy like that, who is willing to do those things – look at the NHL playoffs. A lot of the defencemen who are standing out aren’t always the most skilled guys in the world, but they block shots and they do those things teams need and that’s where Cameron fits in.

"If he’s going to have an NHL career, he’ll have to simplify his game a little bit, but a guy who skates that well and plays that hard is is very attractive to NHL teams."

Lizotte plans to attend the draft in person.

"I’m going to go down and just try to enjoy the whole experience, to learn from it," he said. "Hopefully, at the end of the day, it works out well for me. If not, it’s just another reason to push myself even harder."

The NHL Entry Draft goes June 26-27.

Find Mark Seidel on Twitter at www.twitter.com/MarkSeidel.

ben.leeson@sunmedia.ca

Twitter: @ben_leeson