Yanni Gourde Makes NHL Dream a Reality with Lightning
Christopher Miller, for PHPA.com | December 18th, 2015
For Yanni Gourde growing up in Saint-Narcisse, Quebec, Canada where the main sport is hockey coupled with the fact that Yanni’s father is a “big fan of hockey,” it is not surprising that Yanni and his two brothers got involved with hockey at a very young age.
“Growing up in Quebec the main sport is hockey and my dad is a fan. I have an older brother and a younger brother so growing up we all fell into it and started playing hockey at a very young age for fun.”
Though he always loved hockey, Gourde never saw it as a potential career path for himself.
“I don’t think I ever saw hockey as a career. When I was young I was just playing to have fun,” Gourde said. “I was always confident but I just kept playing year after year to have fun, make the best of it, and be the best I could be. There was never a point where I said I’m going to play hockey for a living.”
Gourde may not have planned on making hockey into a career, but that is exactly what the 24-year-old Tampa Bay Lightning left-winger has done.
This past Tuesday, Yanni celebrated his 24th birthday. However, the birthday celebration would have to wait after he was recalled from the Syracuse Crunch of the American Hockey League to make his NHL debut with the Tampa Bay Lightning in a contest against the Toronto Maple Leafs. To make the day even more special Gourde’s wife Marie, his mother and two brothers were in Toronto at the Air Canada Centre to see the historic occasion.
In his debut, Gourde logged 6:55 of ice time, and earned yet another career milestone with his first NHL point, an assist on Mike Blunden’s goal in the third period which tied the game at 3.
WATCH: Yanni Gourde notch his first NHL point
The Lightning went on to win in overtime 6 to 5.
"A big day for me. It was awesome. I enjoyed every moment," Gourde said of his debut.
To those who have followed Gourde’s rise through the ranks of professional hockey, the surprise is not that Gourde has reached the highest level of professional, playing in the NHL but merely how fast he was able to do it.
At 16, Gourde decided that the best way to further his career was through the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (QMJHL).
“I’m not sure if one option is better than the other. There are benefits to college hockey, and major juniors in Canada. In junior, you get to play more games every year and in college you get a degree,” Gourde said. “I thought about playing college hockey, but with it being so far away from home and English not being my first language, the QMJHL was the best option for me.”
In 2008, at 17-years-old, Gourde began playing his first of four consecutive seasons with the Victoriaville Tigers in the QMJHL. It didn’t take long for Gourde to realize that there was a big change from high school hockey to junior.
“My first season in junior wasn’t very good,” Gourde said. “It was hard at first, playing with a bunch of guys that were much older, players that are much better than you are, but it gets easier once you get used to the pace of the game. You grow up, you get faster, you get stronger, and your seasons start to get better.”
That is exactly what happened for Gourde, his seasons got better, much better. He attributes this improvement to getting bigger physically and improving on the skills he already had.
“I’m still not big today,” Gourde said laughing. “But I got bigger, faster, I have a good hockey sense, I have a bunch of different tools and I just kept working on them and improved after that first year. I realized I’m just as good as these older guys.”
It was his final season with Victoriaville where Gourde began to see all his hard work and improving payoff. In 2011-12, Gourde recorded 124 points in 68 regular season games (37 goals, 87 assists). These numbers earned Gourde the Jean Béliveau Trophy designated for the QMJHL’s top scorer, the Michel Brière Memorial Trophy, given to the league’s Most Valuable Player, and selection to the QMJHL First All-Star Team.
When asked what accounted for his “breakout season,” where he almost doubled his point totals from his previous season, he said it was a combination of many different factors.
“I think it was a combination of different things,” Gourde said. “I was older, I had more experience and had a lot of confidence. I was playing on the first two lines and I knew I had to perform well so we could have a good season,” Gourde continued. “I put a lot of pressure on myself and it worked. I had a good season, but we ended up losing in the first round of the playoffs.”
Gourde had a “good” season indeed chalk full of numerous individual accolades. Accolades he knows he could have never earned without the help of his teammates.
“It was a huge honor to win those awards; there are so many great players who have won those same awards. I was proud I was able to accomplish that, but I wasn’t alone. I had my team behind me and the coaches trusting me,” Gourde said.” It wasn’t me winning those awards; it was the team working together to win those awards.”
It was after that phenomenal season in which Gourde etched his name in the QMJHL record books when he began to entertain the notion of a professional career.
“I never thought I’d play professionally until the end of my last season with the Tigers,” Gourde said. “I was thinking about a different career as an engineer but a week after my season ended I got a call from the Worcester Sharks. It was a dream come true.”
Gourde was excited about his opportunity to play in the AHL with the Sharks, finally earning the right to call himself a professional, at just 18-years-old. He realized quickly that moving to another level brought with it a big adjustment.
“It was nerve-racking making my pro debut,” Gourde said. “Just like before everyone was bigger, faster, older, and stronger. Some of these guys had spent their whole careers here. The first couple games were tough, but once you realize it’s still the same game, you get used to it and start to play better. You have a couple good games and everything gets easier.”
Gourde played four games in the AHL in 2011-12, playing on the Sharks first line, which, Gourde said, “made me even more nervous, but was great experience.”
After just a taste of AHL action in 2011-12, Gourde returned to the Sharks for his first full professional season, playing most of the 2012-13 season (54 games) with the Worchester Sharks of the AHL before being reassigned to the Sharks’ ECHL affiliate, the San Francisco Bulls, where he stayed for the remainder of the season.
Gourde learned very early on in his career something that every professional athlete must come to grips with, regardless of sport. The sobering reality that professional sports though they may be fun and a “dream come true,” they are a job and a business at the end of the day and with that comes little stability very indicative of Gourde’s first few years in professional hockey.
Since signing with Worcester in 2011-12, Gourde has been bouncing back and forth between the AHL and ECHL seeing time with three different organizations (Worchester Sharks – AHL, San Francisco Bulls – ECHL, and the Kalamazoo Wings – ECHL), before finding a home with the Tampa Bay Lightning AHL affiliate in Syracuse where he has been since the 2013-14 season.
For Gourde, getting experience in both the ECHL and the AHL has proven very beneficial.
“The leagues are very different, in the ECHL it is a much more offensive game with more scoring chances. You can have multiple 2-on-1 situations in a game,” Gourde said. “In the AHL it is a more defensive, physical style and not many 2-on-1 opportunities.”
Regardless of the team or the league Gourde finds himself in, one thing remains constant. He plays with his own identity, an identity that he developed back in junior with Victoriaville.
“I never try to change my style of play. I have an identity,” Gourde said. “I play smart, I play fast, I’m not big (physically), but I like to play big going after the puck and battling, making myself hard to play against.”
With time and experience comes improvement. That much is obvious just by looking at Gourde’s statistics. In his first full season with the Crunch in 2014-15, Gourde saw action in 76 games and registered 57 points (29 goals, 28 assists). Gourde attributes the offensive success to playing more aggressively and more ice time.
“I think I was shooting the puck more, coaches have always told me I need to shoot more throughout my entire career,’” Gourde said. “I had great linemates, and the coaches trusted me, putting me on the ice more in tougher situations.”
For the current season, Gourde just wants to focus on the basics, not worrying about the statistics, but improving his own game and playing to help his team win games.
“You can always be faster, you can always be stronger. There is always somebody with a harder shot than you,” Gourde continued, “Sometimes even your strengths can also be your weakness. You always need to keep working to improve all of your skills, not just one or two of them.”
Gourde also expressed the notion that every season is an entirely new season and it is important to leave last season, whether the result was good or bad in the past and focus on the present.
“I’m not necessarily expecting to put up the same numbers as last year,” Gourde said. “We have a good team this year. I just want to continue working hard and improve my game and get better helping my team win so we can get as far as possible in the playoffs.”
Whatever Gourde is doing, it’s working and his efforts have caught the attention of the big league club and has earned him a spot on an NHL roster at 24-years-old.
As Gourde puts it, “it’s a dream come true.” Gourde still remembers telling his father as a child “I want to grow up and play in the NHL.” This week, Gourde made what was once nothing more than a lofty dream for an undrafted, undersized 5-foot-9, 167-pound forward from Quebec into a reality. Already showing he can contribute with an assist in his NHL debut.
While the future is uncertain for Gourde, just as it is for any professional hockey player, the young forward is off to a promising start in the NHL, who vows to take his career “one game at a time.”
