Rudy Guimond wants to take big step in 2nd USHL season with Cedar Rapids RoughRiders

CEDAR RAPIDS — He’s bigger. In a good way.

He’s stronger. More than he ever has been.

Now Rudy Guimond hopes those first two things help him be better. One of the top guys in the United States Hockey League in the 2024-25 season.

“I just lived in the gym this summer,” the second-year Cedar Rapids RoughRiders goaltender said. “Five days a week, Monday through Friday, never missed a day. Just got a lot stronger, put on about 12 pounds of muscle this summer. And I’m at 7.8-percent body fat.

“So I’m in the best shape of my life. It showed in our testing and stuff. That’s basically what my summer was.”

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.”

The RoughRiders have 35 players in camp, a number that obviously will have to be whittled down before the regular-season opener Sept. 20 against Omaha at the annual USHL Fall Classic in suburban Pittsburgh. Those camp players do not include defenseman Gabriel Eliasson, the club’s first-round pick (second overall) in this past spring’s USHL Phase I Draft.

Eliasson, a University of Michigan commit, was a second-round pick of the Ottawa Senators in this summer’s 2024 NHL Draft and is believed to be headed to play major junior hockey in Canada. Carlson said he did not know where Eliasson was headed and wished him well.

“Get our roster where it needs to be. Just do the best we can to get the appropriate amount of structure in our game for this time of year,” Carlson said of his preseason objectives. “We should be pretty well rounded. I like our goalies, I like our D, think we have good size back there, can move the puck and are pretty strong. Up front, I think we’ve got a good mix of all the ingredients, as you can see. I think we’ve got some size and toughness. We’ve got some speed and skill. I think it’s a good mix.”

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