Jesse Sutton will finish out his major junior hockey career with new organization.
The 20-year-old forward from Mount Pearl was traded over the weekend, going from the QMJHL’s Quebec Remparts to the Chicoutimi Sagueneens in a deal that also involved draft picks, with the Remparts sending a seventh-round selection to Chicoutimi and receiving a second-round pick in return.
It’s a transaction that came on the eve of team’s making final lineup decisions and addressed the glut of overagers (players born in 1998) on the Remparts roster. QMJHL teams are allowed to have three overagers on their rosters, but Quebec entered the weekend with four overage players besides Sutton.
Patrick Roy, the team’s owner and general manager, said liked all his veteran players pretty much equally, but that when it came to trade value, the best offer he received for any of them had been for Sutton.
A third-round pick in the 2014 QMJHL draft, Sutton had endured two injury-plagued seasons with the Remparts before having what amounted to a breakout season in 2017-18, scoring 22 goals and putting up 46 points while appearing in all 68 of Quebec’s regular-season contests.
Sutton was renowned for his volunteer work with the Remparts — he a multiple winner as the team’s man of the year when it came to community service. Tthat character is one of the things that appealed to Sagueneens’ head coach Yanick Jean, who told the Chicoutimi newspaper Le Quotodien that he believes Sutton will help instill good values in a young team, while also noting he had earlier attempted to trade for Sutton.
Sutton is the second overager from Newfoundland changing teams this year. In a trade made this past spring, Gander’s Jordan Maher was dealt from the Acadie-Bathurst Titan to the Halifax Mooseheads. That transaction, which was announced just after the Titan won the Memorial Cup, gives the 20-year-old centre the rare chance to become a back-to-back Canadian major junior champion as the Mooseheads are hosting the Memorial Cup this year.
Notes
In another weekend trade, goaltender and Bonavista native Tristan Gray saw his rights traded from the Shawinigan Catraactes to the Moncton Wildcats in exchange for a 10th-round draft pick. Gray played in the Maritime Hockey League with the Campbellton Tigers last season … Defenceman Zach Bennett of Bay Roberts looks like he’ll be starting this season with the Yarmouth Mariners of the Maritime league after playing sparingly in the QMJHL last season. The 18-year-old Bennett spent of his rookie junior season in the “Q,” but appeared in only nine games with the Sherbrooke Phoenix and Acadie-Bathurst, who
