(Laval) The Laval Rocket will cross swords with the Belleville Senators for the 11e time of the season, Friday evening in Belleville, but don’t think that a feeling of weariness has invaded the Laval camp. The stakes in this match are far too high.
That evening, the team of head coach Jean-François Houle will play its season at the CAA Arena. If the Rocket loses, he will be on vacation next week. If he defeats the Senators, he will remain hopeful of participating in the next playoffs in the American Hockey League.
Then, the next evening at Place Bell will follow, another duel of capital importance… against the Senators, the last of the regular season between the two teams, and for both clubs.
“They’re good games,” replied Houle when asked, after his team’s training session Tuesday morning, if he wasn’t a little tired of facing the Senators.
“For the instructors, it’s often the same team, but for the fans, these are intense matches. It’s a rivalry, it’s physical games, it’s good hockey games. Yes, it’s a lot of games against the same team, but it’s part of the American League schedule, and we have to deal with that. »
Even if he is not one of the players on the ice, like Philippe Maillet for example, Houle says he likes these duels where the stakes are so high.
“It’s the “fun” of playing matches like that. The two buildings will be full, you play matches which are important, which mean something. Just that, that should be the “fun”. »
In Maillet’s eyes, playing matches under pressure is a privilege.
“In all sports, it’s rivalries that make good matches. In the National Hockey League, it’s Canadiens-Boston. We are Laval-Belleville, Laval-Toronto. The times the building is the loudest is when we play against Belleville here. These are matches which are intense, which are hard. You get burned out after the matches, but those are the ones that are the most “fun” to play. »
Holder of sixth place in the North section, where five clubs will qualify for the playoffs, the Rocket will take the ice Friday evening facing a decline, at best, of two points on the Senators.
This drop could also be three points, and even four, depending on the result of the Senators’ game against the Syracuse Crunch, Wednesday evening in Belleville.
But even if the Rocket were to fall behind by four points with two games to play, they will move past the Senators with victories in regulation on Friday and Saturday, as the Laval team holds the first tiebreaker.
“We just have to win our matches, one at a time. We start with Friday’s game,” summarized Houle, without forgetting the fact that the Utica Comets could mix things up by winning their last three games of the season.
“They are going to play three games in three nights, which is very tough. If they win them, good for them. Maybe they’ll deserve it. We don’t worry about other teams, we worry about our team. We only want to win our matches,” Houle repeated.
To try to understand why the Rocket players are facing such a situation so late in the season, we could start to dissect the schedule and try to identify a particular game that caused more harm than another.
This is not the kind of exercise that Houle will take part in at the end of the season, if it ever ends on Saturday evening, because he does not believe that the outcome of a 72-game campaign comes down to one only part.
On the other hand, Houle knows that his team found itself in a difficult situation early in the season and that his players had to roll up their sleeves.
“We didn’t win many matches at the start of the year, but credit to the players in the locker room, who found a way to get back on track. One of the youngest teams in the American League. They’ve done a good job to get to where we are now. »
On Tuesday, Houle was busy preparing for this last weekend a little blindly, because he did not know the identity of all the players he could deploy on the ice.
For example, injured centers Brandon Gignac and Mitchell Stephens represent uncertain cases.
Furthermore, the general manager of the Canadiens, Kent Hughes, could return to the Rocket defenders Jayden Struble, Justin Barron and Logan Mailloux, as well as forward Joshua Roy, if he recovers from his injury.
But regardless of which players will be in uniform Friday night, Houle wants Saturday’s game at Place Bell to be important for a very specific reason.
“Our fans deserve it. I am sure that our players will give everything on Friday night in Belleville to try to win this match. »