(Providence) When he met with journalists the day after the decision of the Montreal Canadiens’ staff to sell him to the Laval Rocket at the start of the week, defender Logan Mailloux declared that he was going to direct his concentration towards the opening weekend of the American Hockey League season. Friday evening in Providence, he delivered the goods with panache.
Mailloux had the best game of his career in a Rocket uniform with four points, including two goals, in a 5-2 victory against the Bruins.
The young defender was the architect of a five-goal surge without response from the Laval team starting in the middle of the first period when he contributed to Adam Engström’s goal.
He added the eventual winning goal in the middle of the second period, and scored the last goal of the game, in the third period.
Before having a blast against the Bruins, Mailloux delivered his best performance in the American League on February 10, 2024 against the Marlies in Toronto, with a goal and two assists.
Did he know he had achieved a personal career high? Maybe not. But it doesn’t matter, because that’s not what mattered to him.
“It sure feels good. It feels good to win, too,” replied Mailloux after his evening of work.
Like Mailloux, head coach Pascal Vincent would have had good reason to celebrate an individual tour de force, since he began his career behind the Rocket bench with a triumph.
But just like Mailloux, Vincent focused mainly on the collective.
“Of course the victory is satisfying. But beyond that, it’s how we won. The process was good from start to finish, the effort was there, the guys played for each other. Obviously, we love the result, but until the last shift, we played the right way. »
Filip Mesar, with a goal and two assists, and Lucas Condotta – the new captain of the Rocket –, with two assists, also had a strong game.
William Trudeau was the other scorer for the Rocket, who largely dominated this match, as demonstrated by his 39 shots towards Brandon Bussi, or 13 per period, compared to only 14 for the Bruins towards Jakub Dobes.
Vinni Lettieri and Patrick Brown scored goals for the Bruins.
Poor start
We cannot say that the Rocket started the meeting in the best way.
It wasn’t yet three minutes into the game that the Rocket found themselves shorthanded when defender Chris Jandric was caught for holding.
Just 12 seconds later, at 3:06 and on the first puck aimed at him this season, Dobes gave in on Lettieri’s shot.
Despite this goal, the Rocket players managed to dictate the tempo of the match, except that it was the Bruins who scored the next goal, that of Brown, using a shot from a very tight angle that Dobes might have liked to see again, at 10:36.
“They scored on the power play and they had this goal where the shot found an opening, but I thought we played well five-on-five. We continued to work and looked forward to each of our appearances on the ice,” noted Mailloux.
The Rocket returned to the game less than three minutes later thanks to Engstrom, who completed a play by Condotta and Mailloux.
Pascal Vincent’s men took advantage of a Lettieri penalty to tie the game thanks to Mesar’s goal at 7:32 of the middle period before Mailloux added his third point of the match, and his first goal of the season , about six minutes later.
“At 0-2, there was no panic because we had the upper hand, we didn’t give much away,” noted Vincent.
“We felt it, there was this confidence on the bench that we could come back. Yes, we were losing 2-0, but at the same time, we felt in control of the match. It was just a matter of time. The way the team played tonight (Friday), it was impossible for us to lose,” added the Rocket head coach.
Trudeau doubled the visitors’ lead at 2:36 of the third period.
The Rocket defender completed a foray deep into the opposing zone by going around the net and beating Bussi to put the puck behind the Bruins goaltender.
Mailloux added the icing on the cake with his second goal of the match, a beautiful play in which he beat two opponents before slotting a backhand shot into the upper part of the net with just under seven minutes remaining. the third period.
The Rocket will complete this short two-game road trip tomorrow night in Springfield, against the Thunderbirds.