Pure shock

MONTREAL – Sven Andrighetto loves Quebec so much that he has it tattooed on his heart. Literally.

Andrighetto’s stint with the Quebec-based Rouyn-Noranda Huskies had a significant impact on the type of player – and the type of person – that he eventually became. By his own admission, it wasn’t in his native Switzerland that he first thought he could one day reach the pros, but rather when he arrived in North America at the age of 18.

When he was selected 11th overall by the Huskies during the CHL Import Draft back in 2011, Andrighetto didn’t know much about Quebec, and even less about Abitibi-Temiscamingue.

“The first time I set foot in Rouyn-Noranda, I was in shock. My father came with me for the first visit. He wanted to make sure that I was safe. We had a layover of eight hours in Montreal before flying to Rouyn-Noranda, so we took the time to explore a little bit and walk around,” explained Andrighetto, who grew up and played hockey in Zurich and its surrounding areas. “It was the first time either of us had been to Montreal, too. I was really excited thinking that Rouyn would be just like Montreal. It’s less than a two-hour plane ride away. I don’t know why, but I thought that it would just be three hours away by car.”

Let’s just say that Andrighetto was somewhat surprised going from a major metropolitan city in Montreal with a population of 1.6 million people to a small mining town of a little bit more than 40,000 inhabitants. When his head coach at the time, Andre Tourigny, arrived at the airport in Rouyn to pick him up, his new hockey home was, in fact, very different from the way he’d imagined it would be a few hours earlier.

“It was nighttime and we were driving along a pretty ordinary street. There were a few houses, a few lights were on, no people outside, no cars. That’s when he told me that this was downtown. I was a little bit taken aback right there,” cracked Andrighetto, who did, however, adapt quickly to his new surroundings.

That adaptation process was made a lot easier with the help of his billet, Randy Charchuk. A window maker by trade, he’s also been a shareholder with the Huskies for the last 20 years. It was …

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