The Laval Rocket was 2 minutes 56 seconds from victory when disaster struck.
Updated yesterday at 11:27 p.m.
This time the disaster has a name: Brady Lyle, a player no one knows, except perhaps his immediate family members.
It was he, this Brady Lyle, the same one who scored five goals this season, who took advantage of this Saturday night in Springfield to score his biggest goal of the season late in the game, to tie the game and allow the Thunderbirds to tie the match at 1-1.
In overtime, it was a former CH, Matthew Peca, who scored the winning goal to give the locals a 2-1 win in the first game of this series against the Laval troops.
The Rocket had played well overall, but the roof collapsed at the end.
“We didn’t play a bad game,” said striker Rafaël Harvey-Pinard during a video call at the end of the evening. But we missed some great chances to score, chances we don’t usually miss. The Thunderbirds have a team that has good speed, which relies on a good goaltender. We knew it, and we will have to recover in the next match [ce dimanche]. »
Colleague Danick Martel, the Rocket’s lone scorer on Saturday night with a second-period goal, was a little harsher in his criticism of the game.
PHOTO FROM THE THUNDERBIRDS TWITTER ACCOUNT
Sequence of the match between the Thunderbirds and the Rocket
“It was our worst playoff game,” he said. We had a fairly slow start and it recovered afterwards […], but we are very very disappointed not to have obtained the victory. We had chances in attack and, yes, we had more shots on goal than them, but they had more chances to score. We weren’t able to get out of our zone often and that hurt us. »
In total, the Rocket had 42 shots against goaltender Joel Hofer, while Cayden Primeau faced 39 shots. Once again, the young Rocket goaltender was very solid in front of his net.
“Cayden comes to every game,” noted Rafaël Hardey-Pinard. But we didn’t threaten too much on our side and we will have to help Cayden more than that. Also, we will have to find a way to throw a little more often. »
We expected that and we expect it to be a long series… They didn’t take us by surprise, because we know how good they are.
Rafael Hardey-Pinard
The Rocket will now have to try to find solutions fairly quickly, because the Thunderbirds are obviously a very seasoned club. In fact, for the Rocket, this loss is the kind of loss that can hurt, because it is possible to believe that this loss should not have happened.
Jean-François Houle tried to approach all of this with a little more philosophy.
“I would say we did what we had to do,” explained the Rocket coach. The goal they managed late in the game to tie the game was a puck that hit a pad on the way… Then, during overtime, we had several scoring opportunities, and I liked the way our guys played. »
But it wasn’t enough. Not this time.