NEW YORK — In the hallway before warmups for a game in Erie, Windsor Spitfires assistant coach Jerrod Smith pulled aside captain Will Cuylle.
The forward had been dominant throughout the 2021-22 junior season, averaging more than a point a game and scoring on a near-nightly basis. Smith knew Cuylle would soon move onto bigger stages, so he offered him a simple reminder: Never have a quiet night.
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Even if Cuylle was pressing for offensive results, Smith said, he needed to block shots, use his 6-foot-3 frame to play with physicality, and find ways to fill box scores with more than just goals and assists.
“The skill alone (was) going to get him to the next level,” Smith says now. “But what’s going to keep him there? It’s going to be those things.”
The type of play Smith encouraged has helped Cuylle emerge as an NHL regular for the New York Rangers. Now 22, he has played in all 55 Rangers games this season. His scoring numbers aren’t eye-popping — 10 goals and 18 points — but he’s been a steady, trusted presence for coach Peter Laviolette.
He rarely has quiet nights.
“There are some guys who can’t really handle it and some guys who can,” linemate Jonny Brodzinski says of the jump to the NHL. “I think he’s done a really good job of adapting to the NHL style of play, bringing his physical style but also remaining true to the player that he is and not changing up his game.”
The Rangers have a spotty track record drafting forwards in recent years. Some high picks, such as Alexis Lafrenière and Kaapo Kakko, are useful players but have perhaps taken longer to develop than initially envisioned. The Rangers have also whiffed on top-10 selections Vitali Kravtsov (2018) and Lias Andersson (2017) who didn’t pan out and are no longer with the organization.
Cuylle, though, has been a total win for the Rangers. New York snagged him late in the second round of the 2020 NHL Draft. The team acquired the pick from Los Angeles in a deal for Andersson. The Athletic’s Scott Wheeler ranked Cuylle fifth among Rangers prospects, and Corey Pronman, also with The Athletic, projects him to be a middle-of-the-lineup player with above-average compete level.
“He’s old school,” teammate Vincent Trocheck says. “Works his ass off.”
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Cuylle plays a reliable, balanced game, and that balance extends to his life away from the rink, where he maintains interests outside of hockey.
“He does everything right,” says Philadelphia Flyers defenseman Jamie Drysdale, one of Cuylle’s childhood friends. “He knows his game really well, and he doesn’t stray off the path.”
During Cuylle’s final two years with the Spitfires, his billet dad, John Davies, always left home games in the middle of the third period. He’d head back to the house to prepare steaks and get his grill ready. Then, when Cuylle left the arena, he’d text his billets. Davies would throw the steaks on the fire, and they’d be sizzling and ready when Cuylle — and often a couple teammates — walked through the door.
Cathi Baillie, the Spitfires’ billet coordinator and Davies’ wife, got the fixings ready and usually chatted with the boys for a few minutes when they got home. Then she went to her bedroom where she’d listen to the boys laugh into the night.
“It’s not about the steak,” Baillie says. “It’s about what’s going on around the counter. The memories, the laughs, the friendships that he brought in.”
Davies and Baillie started making steaks for players prior to Cuylle’s time with Windsor, but those nights became more consistent when he moved in. Unless his agent was in town, he never ate out after games. Steak nights were sacred, and they’ve continued since he left. Just this week, Davies and Baillie hosted five Spitfires players for a postgame meal.
Cuylle didn’t live with Baillie in 2018-19, his first season with the Spitfires, but she took him to get a school uniform that year and bought him dinner. Though quiet by nature, he kept conversation going throughout the evening. She remembers enjoying the night and found herself wishing he was her billet player, not somebody else’s.
Later that year, at the annual Spitfires Christmas party, Cuylle showed up with teammate Jean-Luc Foudy. They wore a two-person ugly sweater — a particularly funny visual considering Foudy is a few inches shorter than Cuylle.
“(They) tried to nonchalantly walk in like nobody would notice,” Baillie says. “And then they just started laughing because everybody else started laughing.”
That spoke to Cuylle’s sense of humor and personality, which Davies and Baillie got to see more of the next year when the forward moved into their house.
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“After that, it was just a roller coaster of wonderful memories,” Baillie says.
Cuylle played Scrabble with his billet parents, and they learned he enjoys reading, LEGO and Star Wars. His parents gave him a guitar, and he and Davies bonded over music. He’d strum his new instrument while Davies played along on harmonica. Davies is a financial advisor, and that piqued Cuylle’s interest, too, so they discussed money and investing, Baillie remembers.
Davies and Baillie encouraged his outside interests. On Valentine’s Day, Baillie gave Cuylle gift cards to Chapters, and she mailed him a LEGO set during the COVID-19 pandemic. Cuylle has been into fishing recently, so she had a family friend make him a rod in Rangers colors.
“Any time you have hobbies away from the rink, it’s good,” Cuylle says. “You never want to be all hockey, hockey, hockey, 24/7. … It’s nice to get your head away from the rink because hockey can be stressful sometimes.”
“He reads, he cooks, he’s (still learning) the guitar,” Drysdale adds. “He’s pretty self-sufficient, and he’s got his stuff together.”
By the time Cuylle’s junior career ended in 2022, he and Baillie and Davies had grown close. He credits them with helping him feel comfortable in Windsor. Other players who were less close with their billets frequently came over to his house.
As his career has progressed, Cuylle has remained close with his old billet parents. Baillie appreciates that he texts her without waiting for her to reach out. Along with former Spitfires goalie Michael DiPietro, he’s the player with whom she’s shared the strongest bond.
“In my life,” she says through tears, “those are the two sons I never had.”
Due to the pandemic, the 2020 NHL Draft wasn’t an in-person event, so Cuylle watched from his family home in Toronto. When he heard his name called with pick No. 60, he hopped to his feet and pulled his dad in for a hug, lifting him off the ground. Before long, he had procured a Rangers hat.
Spitfires staffers traveled to Toronto to surprise him on his big day. Wearing protective masks, they posed for pictures, celebrating the start of a dream. Like many Canadian kids, Cuylle had grown up watching hockey. He loved Joe Thornton and told reporters on draft day that he modeled his game off physical Washington forward Tom Wilson.
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“I’ll remember that day, just how happy Will was with a Rangers hat on,” Smith says.
The Ontario Hockey League canceled its 2020-21 season, so Cuylle reported to the Hartford Wolfpack, New York’s affiliate in the American Hockey League. As an 18-year-old, he had a chance to play against professionals, which he believes benefited his development. In normal times, he would have continued playing in Windsor. His teammates also saw the benefit of him taking the temporary leap to the AHL.
“You kind of get a small taste of what you need to do, where you need to get your game to be able to play at that level,” Brodzinski says.
As the pandemic disrupted life and hockey, the NHL, NHLPA and CHL agreed on rule adjustments, including one that would alter Cuylle’s path: After the 2020-21 season, players under 20 would only be eligible to return to the AHL if they played at least 20 AHL games in 2020-21. The Wolfpack played 24 games, and Cuylle suited up for only 18. In short, he couldn’t go back to Hartford — even if that’s what the team wanted. He had to either return to Windsor for 2021-22 or stay on the Rangers NHL roster, which would have been too big a jump.
During the shortened AHL season, Cuylle failed to backcheck at one point, leading to a benching. That contributed to him not reaching the 20-game threshold, and Brodzinski remembers the youngster approaching him about it.
“I’m sorry,” Cuylle jokingly told him. “I was one backcheck away from being your linemate (in 2021-22).”
But just as Cuylle thought the early taste of AHL action was good for his development, so was returning to junior.
“My year in the AHL, I just learned so much, what I had to do,” he says. “Then my last year in junior, that was (a chance to) try to apply that to my game.”
The Spitfires had a new coach that year in Marc Savard, a former center with 800-plus games of NHL experience and a Stanley Cup. Savard didn’t know anything about Cuylle but quickly named him captain after watching him through training camp.
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Savard, now a Calgary Flames assistant, also realized his potential. Particularly impressed by his shot, Savard told Cuylle there was “no reason” for him not to score 40-plus goals and make Canada’s world junior team that season. He accomplished both those feats, finishing with 43 goals — tied for sixth in the league — and helping Canada to a gold medal.
“He could physically compete with anybody,” general manager Bill Bowler says. “And then when you add the skating and hockey sense, he became a world junior player and now an NHLer at a young age.”
Led by Cuylle and now-Dallas Stars forward Wyatt Johnston, the Spitfires won the OHL’s Western Conference before losing in Game 7 of the league final. Cuylle had 31 points in 25 playoff games and went head-to-head with fellow Rangers prospect Brennan Othmann in a seven-game series win against Flint.
“Obviously, he’s playing for his team, but he wants to outplay (Othmann), and he did that,” Savard recalls. “I could see it after that playoff run: He was going to play in the NHL.”
Savard’s intuition quickly proved accurate. Less than a year removed from the 2022 OHL Finals, Cuylle received his first NHL call-up, debuting for the Rangers in January 2023. Now, after impressing management and coaches during training camp, he’s an NHL regular.
Baillie traveled to New York for a pair of games in January. She had seen him play NHL games before, but for whatever reason, watching him skate onto the ice in front of his home fans brought tears to her eyes.
“To see him at MSG, it was like his dream came true,” she says.
He’d made it.
Far removed from Windsor, Cuylle once again has a billet, though this one happens to be a teammate. He lives with Trocheck, his wife, Hillary, and their two young children. Trocheck offered Cuylle a place to stay after training camp, figuring he’d feel more comfortable in a home than living out of a hotel room. Cuylle agreed and quickly moved in.
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As the youngest player on the active roster, he has people looking out for him.
“He’s everybody’s son,” says Brodzinski, who hosted him for dinners last AHL season in Hartford.
When Laviolette assesses Cuylle’s play, he sees someone who has made steady growth. The forward has remained responsible defensively, which isn’t always easy for young players, and the coach believes he can continue to develop offensively. Cuylle made the exact type of play Laviolette wants to see last week, crashing the net after a Kaapo Kakko shot and eventually poking the puck past Calgary’s Jacob Markstrom. Then, on Thursday, he battled for position in front of Montreal’s net and tipped in a Ryan Lindgren pass.
Will Cuylle finally opens up the scoring and gives the Rangers the lead!
(via @JLazzy23) pic.twitter.com/AHXlUdb8CP
— Rangers Videos (@SNYRangers) February 13, 2024
“The more experience you gain as a young player, the more confidence you can get from that,” Laviolette says. “You can continue to grow, even if it’s inside of a year.”
The rookie recently moved to a line with Brodzinski and Kakko, and the trio has developed quick chemistry. Cuylle has also shown a fearlessness throughout the season, fighting opponents three times already. That and all the little elements of his game — his ability not to have quiet nights, as Smith stressed to him in junior — have made him someone teammates trust.
“He gets in on the forecheck and he’s physical. That’s something that every team needs, that’s something our team needs,” captain Jacob Trouba says. “He’s found a role that the team needed, and he’s done a really good job at it.”
(Photo: Brian Babineau / NHLI via Getty Images)