Canadiens: Unlikely Call-Ups From The Trois-Rivieres Lions This Season

The Montreal Canadiens haven’t been the greatest this season. We don’t need to go into that any further, though the same can’t be said for their affiliates, in the Trois-Rivieres Lions and Laval Rocket. Ultimately, what happened with former head coach Dominique Ducharme is in the past, and replacement Martin St. Louis has done his best to light a fire under the Habs, putting together some impressive performances off the back of a resurgence from rookies like Nick Suzuki, Rem Pitlick, and Cole Caufield.

As I said though, it’s been largely the inverse this season for the Canadiens affiliates in the AHL’s Rocket and the ECHL’s Lions. With a 26-21-3 record, the Rocket currently sit eighth in the Eastern Conference, benefiting from the large number of AHL contracted players signed last off-season, who have all stepped up in different formats. From Danick Martel to Kevin Poulin to Gabriel Bourque, and the performance of prospects in Jesse Ylonen and Rafael Harvey Pinard, the Rocket have brought exciting, fast-paced hockey to Place Bell night after night.

With the Habs last ECHL affiliate in the Brampton Beast having jumped ship to the Ottawa Senators due to lack of support, there was doubtless some excitement from a hockey crazed city like Trois Rivieres to have a professional team, especially considering the cities only other prominent team was the now defunct Trois Rivieres Draveurs of the semi-pro LNAH. For the most part, the Lions have delivered, still sitting on the cusp of the Eastern Conference playoff race with a 24-22-3 record.

Speaking of the LNAH (and convenient segues), the Canadiens struggles with both a Covid-19 outbreak, and the injury bug this season, inevitably led to both the Rocket and Lions turning to some of the more obscure facets of this professional hockey landscape for players, and this has inevitably led to me looking into some of these guys. So, with that being said, here’s a look at some of the more unlikely and quite frankly, bizarre call ups who have taken the ice with the Trois Rivieres Lions this season.