Montreal Canadiens: In Other News… Lions Sign Five, Bouchard Leaves Rocket

Trois-Rivières Lions Sign Olivier Archambault to One-Year Deal

Well after a drawn-out past few months, the Trois-Rivières Lions have officially entered the ECHL after making their first roster additions on Friday. While I would normally group all these signings into one section due to the rather unassuming nature of most ECHL-contracted players, Olivier Archambault is a bit of a different story. As I’ve discussed in the past, most of the players that I choose to follow more closely, are usually bizarre and or obscure picks, from former Hab Kenny Agostino to former Rocket farmhand Anthony Beauregard. In that same sense, Archambault’s career is not too dissimilar to any other ECHL regular, though he’s seen his fair share of travels along the way, to say the least.

For certain Canadiens fans, Archambault’s name might ring a bell, as he’s often brought up when discussing the Canadiens’ limited success with home-grown talent, being a fourth-round pick of the Habs in 2011. After a relatively solid junior career in the QMJHL, Archambault got into a 10-game audition with the Hamilton Bulldogs in 2012-13, which constituted his entire time with the Canadiens organization. Since signing with the Iowa Wild as a free agent in 2014-15, Archambault has fought and fought hard to secure a full-time role in the AHL, with limited success, barring in mind a briefly successful run with the Syracuse Crunch in 2017-18.

After posting 18-36-54 totals with the Allen Americans in 2019-20, Archambault went unsigned through the entire 2020-21 season after being suspended and subsequently removed from the Americans roster. At 6’00 and 190 pounds, Archambault possesses solid size, but his skill set is more akin to a smaller, offensively oriented sniper than anything else. While he’s dealt with injury troubles here and there, when healthy, there are few players in the ECHL as skilled as Archambault, and with a chance to play his first full professional season in Trois-Rivieres, I say skies the limit for the La Gardeur native. With solid skating, a decent shot, and unbelievably soft hands for an ECHL forward, Archambault should be the Lions star attraction and something to put fans in the seats night after night.