Ex-Canucks winger Antoine Roussel: ‘Sky’s the limit’ for new assistant GM Émilie Castonguay

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Have no doubt: Antoine Roussel may no longer be a Vancouver Canuck, but he still has positive feelings for his former team, and he’s a big fan of the organization hiring Émilie Castonguay as an assistant general manager.

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Even when that means Roussel has to start looking for a new agent.

“She’s going to be great for this organization,” Roussel said after his new team, the Arizona Coyotes, skated at Rogers Arena ahead of their Tuesday game vs. the Canucks.

“She’s just so competent and hard working … it’s going to be looking like she’s (going through it) with ease, but she’s going to do a ton of work,” he said. “She played the game. She understands the game.”

And she’s a lawyer, Roussel noted. She can see other angles on things, where points of leverage might be.

“I think the sky’s the limit for her.”

Roussel would know. When he signed his four-year, US $12-million deal with the Canucks in 2018, Christian Daigle was Roussel’s agent — and good friend — and the players they compared him to in his negotiations were obvious, he said, citing Andrew Shaw and Micheal Ferland. But the winger said it was Castonguay who did a lot of the nuts and bolts of the contract.

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“The backbone,” he said. And when Daigle died suddenly just over a year ago, Castonguay was ready to help Roussel, both professionally and emotionally.

Daigle’s death hit Roussel hard.

“It’s … obviously, but it’s part of life,” he said philosophically. Roussel still had a year and a half at the time to go on his contract from him — he’s a free agent again this summer — so it was n’t like Castonguay was picking up his file from him at a crucial moment.

“We just remembered the good stuff from Chris and like all the good things he did for me and like, just like it brings you a smile when you look back at everything. Tears at the start, smile at the end,” he said.

“When she came in, I just judged her on her competence. Like are you competent enough to represent me. That’s all I care about,” he said. “I don’t think gender does anything. She she’s just good, competent and hard-working. Probably because she is a woman, maybe she has a different set of eyes.

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“I was so happy for her, I wasn’t just thinking about me when she got the job, I was just like, wow! Amazing!”

When Roussel first heard Castonguay had been hired by an NHL team, he didn’t realize right away where she was headed.

“When I heard the news I thought she was going to Montreal,” he said with a laugh. “I was like, ‘Good job! you’re getting there!’ ”

Then she told him it was Vancouver, and he was further pleased.

“I told her my my recommendation from the city, where to go,” Roussel said.

He said he hold no ill will towards the Canucks after his trade last summer to the desert. Along with Jay Beagle and Loui Eriksson, Roussel was flipped to the Coyotes for Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Conor Garland.

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“It’s part of the business,” the well-tanned Roussel said. “Anything can change at any time. And it’s always better when you change in the summer, you get the time to prepare, you get a chance to set your family up for what’s next. And in the big picture I got that chance to (move his family from him), so this was kind of nice. And I went through it with two of my good friends. So that was nice.

“I had three great years here. I loved it — the city, the fans,” he said of Vancouver. “It’s just a cool spot to be. I got the chance to play in Canada and just like as a player, I feel like you need to have that experience in your life or in your career if you can.”

And while the Coyotes are having a tough season with the team stripping down the lineup, chasing draft picks and youth and ownership clearly avoiding spending, Roussel remains ever upbeat, even if reality is hard to ignore.

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“Some patches are rough,” he said. “You go 10 in a row where you lose, like this team has been through it. And you feel like it’s never going to happen. And at some points it’s tough, but you look back and we’re kind of building on and we had some great games against some great teams.

“That focus is trying to create a winning culture, with the downside of losing quite a bit of games. And I think you do that by having a core that just works hard. And just want to show up to a game. They just don’t pack it in and they show up to win the game.”

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