Diminutive Gourde plays big
Diminutive Tampa forward paid his dues in minors before his breakout season
The other day, Yanni Gourde was answering yet another question about his remarkable road to the NHL when his head coach burst into the dressing room and jokingly tried to break up an interview that was in danger of cutting into his own media availability.
“Coach in two minutes!” said Tampa Bay’s Jon Cooper. “Coach in two minutes!”
Gourde smiled and asked: “Can I finish here?”
It was a reasonable request. After all, Gourde has been waiting a long time for this moment. It has taken six years of riding the buses in the minors, where he’s bounced between the American Hockey League and the lower rung of the ECHL, but the five-foot-nine Lightning forward has finally made it where few others believed he would.
At the age of 26, when some players start to earn veteran status, he finally earned rookie status. And he did it while celebrating the birth of his first daughter earlier this month. As Gourde said, “You don’t see many rookies who have a kid.” Gourde was draft eligible, but went unselected in 2010. At the time, the native of Saint-Narcissede-Beaurivage, Que., was considered far too small.
Eight years later, Gourde’s height is the same, but the game has changed. He finally got his chance and finished third in rookie scoring. Gourde’s 25 goals were two more than Steven Stamkos scored in his first year in the league and his 64 points broke Brad Richards’ 17-year franchise rookie record. Not that he had anything in common with those two players’ debuts.
“It didn’t feel that much like a rookie season,” said Gourde. “It felt like I was new to the NHL, but I’ve been pro for five or six years.” In other words, he has paid his dues. And though Nikita Kucherov, who is two years younger, has played in 365 NHL games, Gourde arguably saw more in the combined 336 games he spread out between two minor leagues and four teams.
“It’s unique,” said Tampa Bay’s J.T. Miller, who is a year younger than Gourde, but in his seventh NHL season. “Sometimes it’s not as easy for everybody to crack the big leagues. He’s gotten here on hard work from what I’ve seen in the last three months.”
After three full seasons with the Victoriaville Tigers of the Quebec junior league, where he had 221 points in 199 games, Gourde signed a one-year contract with the San Jose Sharks’ AHL affiliate in Worcester, Mass. He had just 14 points in his rookie year and the following season was forced to sign a 25-game professional tryout. For the first time, his career had an expiration date. “Of course, I was asking myself the same question,” Gourde said of wondering if this was the end. “But every year, I stepped on the ice and I wanted to get better. And every year I was taking a step closer to the NHL. That’s what kept me driving a little bit.”
Gourde scored 24 points in 25 games with the Worcester Sharks, but when his tryout ended the organization was still unsure about his future. That’s when the Kalamazoo Wings stepped in. Though the Wings played in the ECHL, a notch below the AHL, it was an opportunity for Gourde to get noticed by other organizations. Though Gourde played only half a season in Kalamazoo, he scored 15 goals and had 34 points in 30 games. More than that, he got the contract he had been looking for. The Lightning took a chance on Gourde and signed him to an entry-level deal. In his first full season with the team’s AHL affiliate in Syracuse, Gourde finished second to Jonathan Marchessault with 57 points in 76 games. The following year, he made his NHL debut. “I laid it all out there and I got that call,” said Gourde. “I wanted that for a long time. For the first time, I felt like a prospect. I had never felt like that. That was huge for me. Once I got to this organization, they really treated me like I was a draft pick. I felt like I had a chance to make the NHL if I kept developing.”
Hard work finally got him to the NHL. Now that he’s here, there’s no way he is going to risk changing. “I told myself I’m never going back there.”
It didn’t feel that much like a rookie season. It felt like I was new to the NHL, but I’ve been pro for five or six years.
YANNI GOURDE, Tampa Bay Lightning forward