Gourde gets chance to go back outside in Winter Classic for Kraken

SEATTLE -- Yanni Gourde’s roots are the kind the Winter Classic romanticizes: growing up in a small town, spending all day on an outdoor rink, playing hockey in its purest form.

His outdoor experience helped build the skill and grit he used to battle through the minors, make the NHL and win the Stanley Cup twice as an undrafted, 5-foot-9 forward.

Now, finally, the 32-year-old will play an NHL outdoor game for the first time. The Seattle Kraken will host the Vegas Golden Knights in the 2024 Discover NHL Winter Classic at T-Mobile Park on Jan. 1 (3 p.m. ET; MAX, truTV, TNT, SN, TVAS).

“I’m super excited, honestly,” he said. “I think it’s going to be a lot of fun. Yeah, playing an outdoor game, it’s definitely at the top of the list of things you want to do in the NHL, and I think I’m super fortunate that I’ll get to have one this year.”

Gourde grew up in Saint-Narcisse-de-Beaurivage, Quebec, where some 1,000 people live about 45 minutes south of Quebec City.

His father, Jean-Guy, and uncle Geatan took care of the town’s outdoor rink. It had real boards, topped with a fence instead of glass, and was less than a three-minute walk from home.

Gourde played with his older brother, Guillaume, and younger brother, Jason.

“My dad would be like, ‘You guys go,’” Gourde said. “He’d pick us up later, or we had a curfew and would just come back. We would spend our days there -- days there, all day. It was so much fun.”

From about 12 to 15 years of age, Gourde worked at the rink too.

He maintained the ice at night. During three or four hours, he’d play poker inside, go out in the cold, put down a layer of water and repeat every 15 or 30 minutes, making the sheet nice and thick for the morning.

When it snowed, he shoveled.

“It was some of my best memories growing up,” Gourde said.

The foundation of Gourde’s game came from that ice time and unstructured play, going against his older brother, who had two years on him.

“He was better than me,” Gourde said. “It was just, like, super competitive. We’d play all the time. Definitely got the competitiveness from that.”

Gourde did it because he loved it. He didn’t think seriously about a pro hockey career until after his third season in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League in 2011-12.

He had 124 points (37 goals, 87 assists) in 68 games for Victoriaville, winning the Jean Beliveau Trophy as the QMJHL scoring champion and Michel Briere Trophy as the league's most valuable player.

That earned him a call from Worcester of the American Hockey League and his first shot as a pro. He signed as a free agent and played four games to finish the season.

Once again, he had to compete against bigger, better players. He had to work.

During the next five seasons, he crisscrossed the continent, playing for Worcester and Syracuse of the AHL and San Francisco and Kalamazoo of the ECHL.

He played two games with the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2015-16, 20 with them in 2016-17, and finally made it full time with them in 2017-18, setting NHL career highs in goals (25), assists (39) and points (64) in 82 games. He played a key role in Stanley Cup championships in 2020 and 2021.

The Lightning played their first outdoor game in 2021-22, visiting the Nashville Predators in the NHL Stadium Series before 68,619 fans at Nissan Stadium on Feb. 26, 2022. Gourde didn’t get to go. The Kraken had selected him in the 2021 NHL Expansion Draft.

Was he jealous? At least a little bit?

“I mean, that would have been nice if it would have been a year earlier,” he said. “But no. I’m just super happy that I have a chance to play [in the Winter Classic].”

This is special on a lot of levels.

Gourde is a Seattle original and an alternate captain.

He watched the Kraken go from 30th in the NHL in their inaugural season to making the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first time in 2022-23, earning the first wild card in the Western Conference, upsetting the defending Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche in the Western Conference First Round and taking the Dallas Stars to seven games in the second.

He watched them open their home rink, Climate Pledge Arena, and three-sheet practice facility, Kraken Community Iceplex. He watched fans put on Kraken gear and deck themselves out in Winter Classic gear as soon as it came out.

Now he’ll watch tens of thousands fill the home of the Seattle Mariners of Major League Baseball.

“Our fan base here is great,” Gourde said. “It’s been phenomenal since we started. You can tell from game No. 1 to the playoffs last year how much they grew. It’s been a lot of fun seeing that.”

Asked when he last played outdoors, Gourde said he couldn’t remember. He looked into the distance, seeming both wistful and eager.

“It’s been a long time,” he said.