While they will be considered underdogs in the Champions Hockey League's Group B against HC Davos and Djurgarden Stockholm, brothers Yorick and Sacha Treille believe that their Rouen Dragons are a good team and they can be competitive against clubs from some of Europe's top leagues.
by Derek O'Brien
The Rouen Dragons will make their debut in the Champions Hockey League this August, competing in Group B against HC Davos and Djurgarden Stockholm. While they are expected to be the third team in the group, the players plan on being tough for their Swiss and Swedish opponents to conquer.
“It's good, yeah,” veteran right-winger Yorick Treille said of the upcoming CHL season. “We had a tough draw with Davos and Djurgarden, but we're going to have a competitive team and we're going to try to step up and play some good games.”
Younger brother Sacha Treille added, “We're going to play against two good teams in the CHL, so it's going to be tough but it'll be a great experience for us and we're looking forward to it.”
Yorick, 35, and Sacha, 28, have hockey in their blood. They are the sons of Philippe Treille, a French professional hockey player in the 1970s and '80s, and the brothers spent significant portions of their childhood in North America.
Yorick played at the youth, junior and collegiate levels in the hockey hotbeds of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Massachusetts before embarking on a pro career that has taken him from the USA to Finland, Switzerland, Germany, the Czech Republic and Austria before returning to his native France in 2013. After playing a couple of years for hometown Grenoble, he is now about to play his second season in Rouen.
Sacha, meanwhile, has played his entire career in Europe. A product of the Grenoble youth program, he's played in Sweden, the Czech Republic and Germany, and was re-united with his brother on Sparta Prague for most of three seasons from 2010 to 2013. This past season in Rouen was the start of their second stint together, and they seem to be happy there.
“In Rouen it's the number one sport,” Yorick said of hockey's popularity in the Normand city. “The whole city is behind us and it's a great hockey town. We need more cities like that (in France), but there's a good history there – all the league titles and Continental Cups, so there's a hockey culture there.”
In fact, no team has been more dominant in French hockey since 1990, winning the Magnus Cup for the 14th time in 27 seasons in 2015–16. They've also won the Continental Cup twice, in 2012 and 2016. Add to that the French Cup this past season, and there were three big reasons to celebrate in Rouen this past season.
“That was a good experience,” Yorick said of the Continental Cup, which the Dragons won on home ice. “Playing different teams from different leagues is always fun. We hosted both tournaments (semi-final and final) so we had our fans behind us, and we knew we had a good team so we were confident that we could win it and we did.”
While Yorick and Sacha have played together at the club level sporadically throughout their careers, they have been united at regular intervals on the French national team. This year in Russia was the eighth time they have played together at the IIHF World Championships. In France's only win, 6–2 over Hungary, Sacha was credited with a hat-trick, though he denied after the game that he scored three goals.
“The first one was tipped by Damien Fleury – I I think they're going to correct it after they check it,” he said after the game. Two weeks later, however, the goal is still Sacha's.
“The puck went in for him so good for him,” Yorick said of Sacha's performance. “He's capable and he helped us out tonight, so I'm very proud of him as an older brother. When he's on, he's capable of scoring a hat-trick – I've seen it before although it's harder at this level. You can't even say he was just in the right spot because he made some good plays.”
In addition to the Treille brothers, other Dragons at this year's Worlds included defenceman Florian Chakiachvili and forwards Loic Lamperier and Damien Raux. Chakiachvili and Raux also both have previous experience in the CHL with the Briancon Diables Rouges in 2014, and the club has added three more players who competed in last year's CHL: Canadian defenceman Olivier Latendresse from Black Wings Linz, American defenceman Chad Langlais from the Gap Rapaces, and young French forward Jordann Perret from Grenoble. Collectively, these players will be looked to for experience in this year's European club competition.
Asked whether playing against Europe's top national teams will help his club against some of Europe's top club teams, Sacha answered, “Yeah I think so, because it's two teams that have players in this tournament and we'll have to approach those games the same way we approach these games here against the big teams. We know we're underdogs here and we'll be underdogs there, but that doesn't mean we can't win – we've done it before.”
On the upcoming CHL opponents, Yorick said, “I've played in Switzerland but never in Sweden. The guys know that and last year we had a couple of guys who played in the Swiss league, so we all know Davos is a big name in Switzerland and they're a fast team – it's a very fast-paced league – so we'll have to be ready.
“We've got a few guys from Rouen on this (national) team, so it was a great team,” Yorick said of the Dragons. “It was a great season for us and we want to do it again. Maybe the toughest part will be right at the start.”
Sacha echoed, “We had an unbelievable year and it's going to be hard to improve on that, but next season we'll try to win the championship again.”
Late summer is going to be a busy time for the players playing on both the Dragons and the French national team. They open their CHL schedule with two away games in Davos and Stockholm on 19 and 21 August and finish up against the same two teams at home on 6 and 10 October. In between, les Bleux will travel to Oslo to play three games against Norway, Kazakhstan and Italy where they will try to qualify for the 2018 Winter Olympics.
“It's gonna be a lot of games in a short period of time, but we'll see,” Sacha assessed.