Whenever the CHL awards a franchise the opportunity to host a Memorial Cup, the players know that management will push the chips all in. No rebuilding, no trading for futures, no pleas for patience. And that’s how it played out with the Quebec Remparts, says fourth-year centre Kurt Etchegary.
“At the start of the season we knew that [management] was going to go for it and that the team was probably going to look different after the trading deadline,” Etchegary says.
Some of the moves fell into the expected. Goaltender Zach Fucale came over from Halifax after the deadline in a deal that had been rumoured since late summer. “Having someone who has won a Memorial Cup and a world junior championship playing behind you is a real confidence builder,” Etchegary says of Fucale who backstopped the Mooseheads to a title two years ago. “You really can’t over-estimate how much that means to everyone in the lineup.”
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A second-round draft pick of the Montreal Canadiens in 2013, Fucale struggled in Halifax in the first half of the season and didn’t light it up on arrival in Quebec after the world juniors. He went 8-8 with a goals-against average of 3.22 and a save percentage of .877. It might have seemed like the Remparts would have been farther ahead sticking with the incumbent, 18-year-old Callum Booth, whose numbers out-stripped Fucale’s across the board. In the playoffs, though, the Remparts went with pedigree and experience and it paid off: Fucale’s GAA is down to 2.56 and his save percentage stands at .913. His 30-save performance against Rimouski in a 2-1 double-overtime loss to Rimouski in Game 7 of the Q final was pretty much in keeping with his spring—every night he gives his team a chance to win.
Quebec’s other mid-season pick-ups play somewhat lesser but still significant roles. Vladimir Tkachev is the one you’re most likely to notice and not just because he has been a point-a-game player since he came over in trade from Moncton—Tkachev’s listed height, 5-feet-10, is one of the game’s most creative fictions, though his advertised weight of 144 pounds is a lot closer to the mark. (At the draft combine last year, he might have set a record, weighing in at 137.) Tkachev is an offensive firestarter, an at times spectacular stickhandler who somehow skates into traffic, briefly disappears and then emerges on the other side with the puck and in one piece.
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The most meaningful addition, though, didn’t come in trade but in an answered prayer. Anthony Duclair started the season with the New York Rangers and stuck with the club through to the world juniors when GM Glen Sather loaned him to the Canadian team. After an impressive tournament skating on the first line beside Max Domi and Sam Reinhart, Duclair was assigned back to Remparts. (Subsequently, Duclair was the key piece for Arizona when the Coyotes dealt Keith Yandle to the Rangers on the NHL trade deadline.)
“I’ve been lucky to have played the last five years with Duke, four here with the Remparts and the year before that with Lac St Louis in Montreal,” Ethegary says. “We play a speed game, a north-south game, and that’s [Duclair’s] game.”
Duclair had to be disappointed not to return to the NHL and he didn’t exactly light up the QMJHL over the second half of the season: 15 goals and 19 assists in 26 games, impressive but not what you’d expect out of a player who in a couple of games at the WJC was as good as anyone on the ice. Duclair’s level of play, a bit better than a point-a-game pace, has continued through the QMJHL playoffs with eight goals and 18 assists in 22 games. (As it turns out, those are exactly the same numbers that Etchegary has posted.)
The Remparts’ key player in the playoffs has been a holdover, Adam Erne. A thick-chested wrecking-ball left winger drafted by Tampa Bay in 2013, Erne scored 41 goals in 60 regular-season games and has raised his game in the playoffs—21 goals in 22 games. As much as Tkachev’s measurements are inflated, Erne’s are lowballed: Borrow all the money you can and bet the over on his 211 listed pounds. Erne is strong enough and tough enough to shed checkers en route to the net.
Etchegary is also an interesting case, an overager who has had to approach his season in a go-for-it mode. A native of St John’s, Nfld., Etchegary was projected to be a fourth- or fifth-rounder in his draft year but at the NHL combine an echocardiogram detected fluid around his heart and he went undrafted. Surgery has corrected his condition and he’s trying to play himself into a NHL team’s plans for next season. “Back in [2013] I was invited to Detroit’s rookie camp as a free agent but I didn’t get a chance [to walk on] with any team last year, so the chance to play in the Memorial Cup is another chance to make an impression [with a NHL team].”