Canadiens: Former Rocket Farmhand Alex Kile Making Good in the ECHL
The Montreal Canadiens have always had an up and down relationship with the AHL and, to an extent, the ECHL. When compared to the storied history of the team itself, it’s minor league affiliates have failed to achieve much of the same success, with just one Calder Cup to their name, that being the Hamilton Bulldogs in 2006-07, and no Kelly Cups to show for.
For as many forgotten players that have dotted themselves along the Canadiens history, its current AHL team, the Laval Rocket, have had a remarkably similar amount, especially considering the team has been in existence for less than 10 years. Ultimately, Alex Kile is one such forgotten player, and there are dozens upon dozens of players with careers just like his.
An undrafted left winger out of the University of Michigan, Kile benefited from playing alongside a number of future NHL stars including Kyle Connor, Dylan Larkin, Zach Hyman and Zach Werenski among others, showcasing some solid offensive potential but never really being able to stand out much on his own. Since turning pro in 2016-17, Kile has fit the role of your typical AHL journeyman, the minor league equivalent of a T.J Tynan or Bob Wren. A player who can dominate the AHL but are never quite good enough to stick around in the NHL. For Kile, the ECHL is what he has called home for most of his career, but he’s managed to stick around the AHL in bits and pieces over the past few years, and, for a brief while, was a regular part of the Rocket’s lineup when they didn’t have much else to rely on offensively.
After spending parts of the past two seasons split between the AHL’s Lehigh Valley Phantoms and the ECHL’s Maine Mariners, Kile has gotten off to the best start of his pro career in 2023-24. Seeing a regular role in the East Coast for the first time since the 2020-21 season, Kile has posted 24-25-49 totals over 40 games, earning a brief, three-game cup of coffee with the Phantoms posting no points and a -1 rating. While the call-up left him three games back of the ECHL’s other top scorers, Kile still sits sixth in the league in scoring and has shown no sign of slowing down, something the Rocket have similarly showcased after a less-than-ideal start as a franchise.
Following the Canadiens' brief stint in St. Johns with the IceCaps, Montreal relocated the team much closer to home in Laval for the 2017-18 season, with the team set to play at the newly constructed Place Bell arena. While expectations were high for Laval going into their first season, with a mix of AHL stars in Peter Holland, Byron Froese, Chris Terry and Matt Taormina alongside top prospects in Nikita Scherbak and Michael McCarron, by the start of training camp for the 2018-19 season, the Rocket were reeling from a dreadful 24-42-10 record that saw them lose 12 straight games to finish the season. Even when compared to AHL affiliates struggling with a lack of support from their parent organization, there have been few teams in AHL history who were as depleted as the Rocket were in their inaugural season, turning to a who’s who of players from the ECHL, junior hockey, Canadian U-Sports and even the single A SPHL, the lowest rung on the professional hockey ladder.
5 years removed from his first full-time AHL stint with the Montreal Canadiens affiliate, the Laval Rocket, left-winger Alex Kile is off to a career-best start in the ECHL.
While Kile would’ve fit right in alongside the likes of Willie Corrin, Jackson Leef, Luc-Olivier Blain and Nikita Korostelev, he was still under contract with the Buffalo Sabres AHL affiliate, the Rochester Americans, seeing 13 games of AHL action over two seasons. While he showed a decent scoring touch as a rookie with the Cincinnati Cyclones, Kile would spend most of the 2018-19 season bouncing between the ECHL and AHL before landing with the Rocket in the latter half of the campaign. The 2018-19 season did see a marked improvement for Laval from the season prior, but considering that the campaign ended with a 12-game losing streak it wasn’t exactly a difficult task.
After long-time head coach Sylvain Lefebvre was finally fired after leading the IceCaps and Bulldogs to just one playoff appearance in five seasons, long-time QMJHL bench boss Joel Bouchard was brought in to try and shake up what was an admittedly dire situation, and in spite of a similar lack of support from the Canadiens as the season prior (Thanks, Marc Bergevin) Bouchard still managed to keep Laval in the playoff hunt for a good chunk of the season even with a lack of any-true star players or AHL regulars for that matter. The main storyline from that season was of course the tale of Alex Belzile, a long-time ECHL regular who had just come off his first full AHL season with the San Antonio Rampage after leading the Colorado Eagles to their first Kelly Cup title while leading the ECHL in playoff scoring.
Hailing from the extremely small town of Riviere-Du-De-Loup, Quebec, Belzile had a career path unlike any other, seeing setbacks, demotions and healthy scratches at basically every single level he played at whether it be Midget Triple AAA, the QMJHL, the ECHL, the AHL, or the NHL. Being signed to a one-year AHL deal as an expected depth contributor, Belzile shocked pretty much everyone by leading the Rocket in scoring with remarkable 19-35-54 totals over 74 games, sticking around the Canadiens organizations for the next five seasons before remarkably making the team full-time at the end of last season, earning a two-year, one-way deal with the New York Rangers this past Summer.
While Belzile’s story is one of the most fascinating in the Canadiens' recent history, it also set a precedent for a Rocket team that, in many ways, was the underdog in pretty much every arena they played in that season. Aside from Belzile, the rest of the Rocket’s lineup was largely composed of unproven prospects and AHL veterans who either struggled mightily or were recalled by Montreal/traded at some point in the season. As was typical of the aforementioned Bergevin era, his tendency to plug holes in the Habs lineup rather than fix them over and over and over also applied to Laval, with proven AHL contributors like Kenny Agostino and Michael Chaput being forced into regular roles with the Canadiens early in the 2018-19 season.
As a result, guys like Kile were able to slide into the lineup simply based on their work ethic, something Bouchard prioritized when it came to ice time. Being loaned to Laval from Maine along with goaltender Connor Lacouvee, Kile posted 5-2-7 totals over a then career-high 33 games, becoming one the more dependable forwards in Laval’s bottom-six alongside current Canadiens fan favourite Michael Pezzetta. While both the Canadiens and the Rocket would end up missing the playoffs (even as both made things interesting in their respective divisions), things would only continue to improve for Laval, as the Canadiens finally relieved themselves of the unbelievably messy and chaotic Marc Bergevin era. With a farm system now centred entirely around development and the Canadiens' sole focus being on the future, Laval has revamped their roster around Montreal’s future, yet have still managed to maintain a nice balance with their veteran additions as well, and ultimately, guys like Kile set the standard that players like Brandon Gignac, Phillipe Maillet, and Mitchell Stephens have since carried on.
While Montreal’s relationship with the ECHL continues to be a mess as the Trois Rivieres Lions depth and roster stability have fallen off a cliff, guys like Kile are always an injury away from finding their next AHL opportunity, and with his performance thus far in the 2023-24 season, there’s a chance we’ll see Alex Kile facing the Laval Rocket once more, sooner, rather than later.
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