Habs hockey stick-ler scores with assist from ex-junior team

March 20, 2024 Canuck

There are favourite hockey sticks, then there are favourite hockey sticks of which there is only one in the hometown arena at which you won a league championship.

And then you use that stick to score a goal in a close game between two Canadian National Hockey League teams.

Not just any ol’ teams from the hockey-mad Great White North, either. One is the oldest, most-storied franchise to take to NHL ice — for which you happen to play — while the other has several stories of its own and features two of the league’s top players at their home rink.

Add loud cheers and high drama in a close game, and you have what Kaiden Guhle went through Tuesday night at Edmonton’s Rogers Place.

Guhle, a Montreal Canadiens defenceman who was the fabled bleu, blanc et rouge’s top draft pick four years ago, scored the tying goal as his team surged in the third period of its eventual 3-2 overtime loss to the host Oilers.

And the Sherwood Park native — who ended his junior hockey career with the Edmonton Oil Kings in 2022, when he helped the team win the Western Hockey League championship, before turning pro last season — did it with his preferred stick, although it almost didn’t happen were it not for the help of his former junior equipment manager.

Guhle had broken the last of his chosen Bauer sticks in Montreal’s previous game, a Saturday loss to the host Calgary Flames.

He had started using them with the Oil Kings and was down to one of his Habs teammates’ “old samples” when he broke it at Calgary’s Saddledome.

Since he was back in familiar territory in the bowels of Rogers Place, which the Oil Kings share with the Oilers, Guhle figured he’d hit up the WHL team’s staff to see if they had any.

Sure enough, head equipment manager Rogan Dean had one that Guhle had used with the Oil Kings.

“I’d tried some back when I was playing here, and it was the same stick that I tried a couple years ago, so it’s kind of funny how that worked out,” Guhle said following Tuesday’s game.

Dean said when he scoured his storage room to see if he had any — “I usually keep most sticks for a couple of years,” he told CTV News Edmonton on Wednesday — he didn’t find one until another staffer spied it.

“Our medical guy, Jimmy (athletic therapist McKnight), found one behind the door that was already taped up from when Kaiden was here, so he’d used it in practice,” Dean said.

“I brought it up for him, and he used it.”

Guhle sent Dean a text right after the game to thank him.

“He said, ‘Thanks, Rogues. That’s all you, man. See you this summer. Take care,'” the equipment man said.

And while Dean technically works for the Oilers — the Oil Kings are a part of owner Daryl Katz’s sports business empire — and was cheering for Edmonton to win, he was happy to help Guhle find the right twig.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re in the NHL, if you’re playing CIS, or you’re just playing men’s league, I take pride in anybody that’s played for us,” he said.

“They can always come to me if they need help or need something. It was no surprise that he reached out looking for something because he knows anybody that comes through here knows that they can always reach out to me if they need something.”

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Nahreman Issa

View original article here Source