HALIFAX — The Guelph Storm and Rouyn-Noranda Huskies took very different paths in building teams that were Memorial Cup-worthy.
The Huskies and Storm will face off Saturday at 3:30 p.m. in their first round-robin games at the tournament.
The Storm were pieced together of the last nine months while Rouyn-Noranda is decidedly home-grown.
Nine members of the Storm joined the team over the course of the season, or in Jack Hanley’s case just before it, and 12 members of the roster was drafted by Guelph. Three of them won’t dress today.
On the other side, the Huskies roster has 20 players who are home-grown.
“For us, it’s huge. All of our team grew up together and that’s why we have really good team chemistry,” said Rouyn-Noranda coach Mario Pouliot.
Pouliot is looking to become the first coach ever to win back-to-back Memorial Cups with different teams, having led Acadie-Bathurst to the title a year ago.
“At some point we drafted those guys for a reason, so for us it’s really important for us to develop them the right way and to keep our culture at the level we want, it’s really, really important for us.
“When we made some trades, we had to be careful to bring guys with the same type of DNA.”
The significant exceptions to the Huskies’ home-grown squad is defenceman Noah Dobson, acquired at the deadline from the Acadie-Bathurst Titan, the team Pouliot coached to a Memorial Cup championship last season.
The Summerside, PEI, native had 15 goals and 37 assists this season in 56 games and was a member of Canada’s World Juniors team.
Joel Teasdale also came over at the deadline, as did winger Louis-Phillipe Cote, acquired from Quebec at the deadline, was originally drafted by Rouyn-Noranda.
Pouliot said Guelph is a really good team with lots of skill, but that his team will be looking to dictate the style and speed of the game.
“It’s a really good team, to be honest, a really good team,” Pouliot said.
“They have depth, they have pretty good D that are a lot involved in their rushes and their first line with Ratcliffe, Suzuki and Entwistle are really good.
“But at the end of the day we’re going to focus on our team and we believe in our quality and we’re going to use it.
“We’re going to play our style, we’re going to force them, we’re going to play fast and we’re going to see what happens at the end of the day,” Pouliot said.
“Our DNA is based on a high compete level, playing fast is really important and never giving up.”
The Huskies three overagers, QMJHL scoring leader Peter Abbandonato, goaltender Samuel Harvey and devenceman Jacob Neveu were all members of the 2016 Huskies squad who lost to the London Knights in the 2016 Memorial Cup final.
