EDMONTON — To get an idea of what kind of person Kaiden Guhle is, of who he is as a player, you only have to see what he was most excited about returning home for the first time as an NHL player.
It wasn’t a favorite restaurant of his. It wasn’t seeing his friends and family. It wasn’t the weather, obviously.
No, it was that Guhle’s last junior team, the Edmonton Oil Kings, would be in town, giving him a chance to see his former teammates.
“That’s one of the first things I checked, was their schedule,” Guhle said last week. “I’m so excited to see the guys.”
That’s what Guhle did Friday morning. The Canadiens were supposed to practice Friday at Rogers Place, but they canceled it shortly after their 2-1 win in Calgary on Thursday night. That meant Guhle could have stayed at his hotel, he could have slept in, he could have done whatever he wanted, including nurse what was surely a nasty welt from blocking a Michael Stone blast with 24 seconds left in the Calgary game and needing help to get to the dressing room.
Nope. Guhle was at Rogers Place on Friday morning, seeing guys he was playing with just a few months ago.
Kaiden Guhle laying the body with the Oil Kings. (Larry MacDougal via Associated Press)
Of course, Guhle also saw friends and family. That goes without saying. But his teammates came first.
That familiarity Guhle still has with those Oil Kings players, many of whom he was competing alongside at the Memorial Cup just six months ago, also underscores how unlikely it is that he was back at Rogers Place as a member of the Canadiens on Friday.
Guhle’s mother, Carrianne, was on her way back from a vacation in Mexico on Thursday, and she landed in Calgary with about eight minutes left to play, just in time to see her son writhing in pain on television. But she was also just in time for the Canadiens’ game against the Edmonton Oilers on Saturday, her youngest son’s first in his hometown.
That’s because the vacation to Mexico was booked in July. And at the time, the possibility that Guhle would be playing in this game on this day didn’t really enter into the equation.
“We actually planned it so we wouldn’t miss his first game, if he ever played,” Carrianne Guhle said Friday. “So that’s how we planned it. Because it was booked in July. It just worked out that we came home in time for this.
“That was too far away to think.”
Carrianne Guhle will be at the game Saturday with a lot of family in tow. So will Guhle’s father, Mark (Guhle’s parents got divorced many years ago), but here’s where the fact his son is an NHL player hasn’t kicked in for him, either, because Mark Guhle wouldn’t let his son buy him tickets.
“Nope,” he said, “that’s not happening.”
Mark Guhle can’t fathom the money his son is making, the lifestyle he is able to live at such a young age. He is still numb to it, just like Carrianne is, and just like their son, who still describes being in the NHL as surreal.
Carrianne, Kaiden and Mark Guhle at Rogers Place last November. (Arpon Basu / The Athletic)
But in another sense, Mark Guhle has always known this would happen. He saw it when his son was very young.
“I remember one time, the first time I thought, ‘Oh, what’s this kid all about?'” Mark said. “He was probably just learning to walk, like maybe 16 months old or something, and he was running downstairs, and I don’t think he saw the wall. There was a mirror there, and he kind of ran right into it with his head. And he had quite a bald head at that time, so no hair to protect him. And I thought, oh, here it goes. But he kind of got knocked on his bum, sat down, kind of rubbed his head a little bit, got up and just kept going. I thought that’s kind of weird. Either he doesn’t feel pain or whatever.
“But that’s certainly the first time I really saw determination. He’s pretty determined.”
Guhle is coming home to Edmonton not only as an NHL player but also as a legitimate top-four defenseman, one who gets difficult matchups game after game and recently was asked to play on the right side for the first time in his life.
And what makes that so remarkable is just how matter-of-factly the Canadiens treated the move.
“It was the Columbus game (on Nov. 23) the first game, and we didn’t go to the rink that day because it was a back-to-back,” Guhle said. “So I just showed up at the rink, the lineup was there, and I was on the right. I played right the one time in New Brunswick in the preseason, they thought I played well, so they just tried to put me back there. I like playing the right. It’s fun. It’s a new challenge.”
Coach Martin St. Louis pushed back a bit on the notion that the Canadiens didn’t talk to Guhle about it, noting assistant coach Stéphane Robidas discussed it with him before the game. But that’s how Guhle got the news, and he just rolled with it.
“I think Guhles, one of his biggest assets is his skating, but also Guhles is a hockey player,” St. Louis said. “Because of his skating, he’s very versatile. Is playing the right easy for a lefty? No, it’s not, especially in this league. But we feel that he has the ability, the tools, to manage the right side. Is that a vote of confidence from us? Yeah, but I don’t think we would put a kid there thinking that he couldn’t do the job and hurt his confidence doing it.”
That’s just about the biggest compliment St. Louis could give Guhle, and it’s what makes his smooth transition to the NHL that much more remarkable. Just listen to Flames coach Darryl Sutter discuss defensemen playing on the wrong side.
“It’s just a way different view,” Sutter said before the game Thursday. “The best way to look at it is guys playing their off wing, some guys can, some guys can’t. It’s really hard. The biggest difference would be, it’s not the puckhandling… it’s just the way you see your reads and your coverage, things like that. The best way to look at it, when you think about it, is just think of it like a second baseman and a shortstop, the difference. Like, it’s a totally different look.”
Sutter was talking about MacKenzie Weegar, who has played a few games for the Flames on the left side as a right shot. Thursday was Weegar’s 329th NHL game. He turns 29 in a month. If it’s hard for Weegar, imagine what it’s like for Guhle.
But Sutter said the reason Weegar can pull it off is he has a good head for the game, and that applies to Guhle as well.
“I think just keeping it on your forehand is the biggest thing, as much as possible,” Guhle said of playing the right side. “When it’s on your backhand, you’ve got to be comfortable with making plays on your backhand, which I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable over the past couple of weeks. But if you keep it on your forehand as much as possible, you should be fine.”
Guhle further explained that on the right side, if a puck is chipped behind him and he goes back to retrieve it, he is already on his forehand, making it easier to reverse the puck to his partner Joel Edmundson or turn up ice if there’s room. and skate it out on his forearm, even if that means turning towards the middle of the ice.
That involves making a decision, a read, and that’s something Guhle has shown an extraordinary ability to do.
“He’s not getting himself into trouble very often, which is impressive to be able to do that at such a young part of his career,” Mike Matheson said. “There aren’t a lot of times where he gets the puck in a situation where he has to make a really quick decision — and those quick decisions are difficult and often lead to mistakes — where he makes a mistake. His positional game is really good.”
Matheson went on to explain that when he was younger, with his gifts as a skater and a puckhandler, he was often worried about creating offense, about finding opportunities to use those gifts that got him to the NHL. Those opportunities needed to be weighed against the risks involved, and that often led to his making mistakes.
Guhle has many of those same gifts. He is an excellent skater and passer, but he doesn’t have those same concerns about creating offense. Or at least he doesn’t play like it.
“That’s such a mature game,” Matheson said. “It’s impressive.”
The maturity of Guhle’s game is difficult to quantify.
His five-on-five metrics are, frankly, awful. He is last on the Canadiens in expected goal percentage at five-on-five, a dismal 39.48 percent, according to Natural Stat Trick. No one on the team has been on the ice for more goals against at five-on-five than Guhle’s 22 in 23 games. His possession numbers are the worst on the team.
But the eye test definitely tells a different story, one of a player who rarely makes mistakes, who is rarely caught out of position, who faces difficult matchups and comes out of them on the winning side more often than not. His skating, his physical play, his vision with the puck, his instincts — none of that shines through in his numbers.
At least not the publicly available ones.
Over at Montreal-based analytics company Sportlogiq, however, there are different numbers, and the ones it provided to The Athletic paint a different but perhaps more accurate picture of Guhle’s game.
Kaiden Guhle’s 5-on-5 Sportlogiq numbers
| Metric | Every 20 minutes | NHL rank among defensemen |
|---|---|---|
|
DZ Turnover rate |
10.6% |
29th |
|
Zone exits |
2.5 |
87th |
|
Outlet passes |
9.9 |
13th |
|
Zone entries |
0.8 |
93rd |
|
Stick checks |
1.8 |
23rd |
What’s important to keep in mind is that there are 32 teams in the NHL, so roughly 192 defensemen play regularly. Even though Guhle’s zone exits per 20 minutes are 87th and his entries per 20 are 93rd in the NHL among defensemen, that puts him in the top half of the league in both metrics. But his outlet passes, defensive zone turnover rate and stick checks are in elite territory, and that really lines up with what the eye test would tell you about Guhle’s game.
Kaiden Guhle skates away from pressure in a game against the Penguins. (Vitor Munhoz / NHLI via Getty Images)
All of that results in trust. Trust from his teammates, trust from his coaching staff. Which is why Guhle was on the ice coming out of a timeout with 53 seconds left and the Canadiens clinging to a one-goal lead, why he blocked that Stone missile from the point with his mother watching in horror a few kilometers away at the Calgary Airport.
Guhle is returning home to Edmonton not only as an NHL player. He is returning as a trusted NHL player.
“Seeing guys taking care of the team is contagious,” St. Louis said after the game Thursday. “When Guhles sees (David Savard) blocking all these shots, (Edmundson), you can go down the line tonight, but just in general, we have a mentality of taking care of the team. And Guhles, our young guys are willing to do that, too.”
That’s all well and good, and Savard has been Guhle’s biggest mentor this season, his defense partner up until recently, his training partner before training camp, someone who has taught Guhle a lot and made this transition to the NHL much easier on him.
But when that timeout ended, it was Guhle who was sent out for that defensive zone faceoff while Savard stayed on the bench.
Because if there’s one thing Guhle doesn’t need to learn, it’s taking care of the team.
Just ask the Edmonton Oil Kings.
(Top photo of Kaiden Guhle checking Vladimir Tarasenko: Dilip Vishwanat / Getty Images)
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