Red Wings prospect goaltender Rudy Guimond tends to get lost in the goaltending shuffle. The Wings drafted the Cedar Rapids Roughriders’ goaltender 169th overall in 2023, and Guimond was a skinny kid whose rookie USHL season went…all right.
Guimond spoke with the Cedar Rapids Gazette’s Jeff Johnson about preparing for his sophomore year in Cedar Rapids, and it sounds like Guimond is determined to get onto the Red Wings’ prospect radar this upcoming season:
Guimond, 19, saw plenty of time between the pipes last season, playing in 33 games for the RoughRiders, who began their campaign Friday night with a preseason game at ImOn Ice Arena against Dubuque. The teams meet against Saturday night in Dubuque.
The Quebec resident basically broke even from a record standpoint, going 13-13-3-1. The peripherals were just OK: a 3.66 goals against average and .869 save percentage.
“I learned that this is a tough league. A lot tougher than I thought,” Guimond said. “It was funny, at the start of the season, I was super good and was blowing it out of the park with insane numbers and stuff. I was like ‘Oh, this might be easy.’ Then it was like nope. When teams started figuring it out and stuff, it gets much harder.
“I think mentally I got a lot better from last season. I mean, we talk about getting stronger in the weight room. This was stronger in the mind. There was a lot of stuff going on, with ups and downs, bad bounces, losses and that kind of thing. Just not let it play in my head.”
Guimond has good goalie size at 6-foot-2 1/2 and now has more weight to go with that height. He said he ended last season at 164 pounds and checked into fall camp a couple of weeks ago at 178.
He is headed to Yale for college hockey beginning next year. Guimond was a sixth-round pick of the Detroit Red Wings in the 2023 National Hockey League Draft and said the club checks in with him regularly, about once every two weeks.
“I want to win a Clark Cup this season,” he said. “That’s my expectation, and I’ll do everything to fulfill it. I’m sure all the guys will, too. Individually, I just want to get consistently better. Develop and make sure every week that I’m getting better at something, so that next year I’m ready for college hockey.”
