(Laval) Before the start of the match Friday evening, Alex Belzile was warmly applauded by the spectators gathered in the stands at Place Bell. About three hours later, he was heckled by some of these same fans, which did not prevent him from capping a reunion evening in the most beautiful way.
Belzile highlighted his return to Place Bell by scoring one of his team’s two goals in the shootout, and another in regulation, and the Laval Rocket suffered a heartbreaking 4-3 loss to the Hartford Wolf Pack Friday night.
During the shootout, Belzile stepped in front of Jakub Dobes, to boos from the crowd, and beat the Rocket goaltender with a shot to the upper right.
Jean-François Houle was not surprised by the performance of Belzile, to whom the Rocket paid tribute before the match with the presentation of a video.
“He’s the same player he was. He lifts the sticks, he’s an intense player, he talks to his teammates, he’s good on faceoffs. A very good player,” described Houle.
Brett Berard sealed the outcome of the match by thwarting Dobes with a backhand shot into the top corner, after putting the Rocket goalkeeper down with a nice feint.
Previously, Joshua Roy and Emil Heineman had been frustrated by goalkeeper Louis Domingue.
In regulation time, Philippe Maillet (4e), Roy (8e) and Riley McKay (3e), all three in the first period, thwarted Domingue, who blocked 28 pucks.
The Rocket (5-12-5) thus suffered a ninth consecutive defeat. A disappointing setback because the Laval team delivered a quality effort against one of the toughest rivals in the American League.
“It’s definitely a step in the right direction. I liked our competitiveness. We competed. We scored big goals, we were in the match and we lost in the shootout. But I thought we had good chances and we played well,” analyzed Houle after this other failure.
In his first outing since last Saturday in Abbotsford, during which he offered a poor performance, Dobes delivered a much more convincing performance.
The Czech goalkeeper faced 40 shots, including several awkward ones. He saved the furniture on a few occasions in regulation time and also against Brennan Othmann, early in overtime.
He couldn’t do anything, however, on the Wolf Pack’s three goals, scored by Belzile, Turner Elson and Ryder Korczak.
The two teams will cross swords again on Saturday afternoon, at the same place.
The opportunistic Rocket
Before the start of the match, two statistics particularly attracted attention.
Initially, the Rocket had scored only one goal in its last 23 opportunities during power plays. Furthermore, the Wolf Pack occupied second place in the American League with an efficiency percentage of 87.6% on the penalty kill.
However, we must believe that the Rocket players were unaware of this information, because they struck twice on the power play in 23 seconds, early in the first period.
Maillet opened the scoring at 3:47 with a wrist shot that beat Domingue to his right during minor penalties to Connor Mackey and Brandon Scanlin, called within 21 seconds of each other.
Roy then ended a streak of nine games without a goal and seven games without collecting a single point when he jumped on his own return, after receiving a pass from Heineman, with three seconds remaining on the penalty in Scanlin.
“The power play has been struggling for a long time, and it feels good to have scored a couple of goals,” noted Maillet.
Belzile reduced his former team’s lead by scoring on a power play at 6:01. It only took 38 seconds for the Rocket to regain a two-goal cushion, courtesy of McKay.
However, the Wolf Pack had not said its last word.
Gradually, the visitors began to regain some composure. From the middle of the initial engagement, we felt them more incisive and above all more present in Rocket territory.
But it was only midway through the second period that the Wolf Pack brought the duel back to square one by scoring two goals in 21 seconds.
Elson first reduced the Rocket’s lead to 7:53 by deflecting a low shot from the blue line by Bobby Trivigno. Korczak continued after an error by Nathan Légaré in his zone.
Dobes made a commendable effort to prevent the equalizer, stopping a first shot from Matej Pekar and then another from Korczak before finally giving in.
“Again, I think that’s the story of our season. We take our foot off the pedal for two or three minutes, and there are two goals, three goals that come in,” Maillet first lamented.
“It’s a good effort. It’s a good team and we still gave a good push for almost the entire match,” Maillet then consoled himself.
The Rocket did not start the third period in the best way. The Laval team played almost four consecutive minutes short of a man following more or less judicious minor penalties to Logan Mailloux and McKay.
Jean-François Houle’s men held on, limiting their rivals to just three shots during these worrying and crucial moments for the Rocket.