(Laval) There are those defeats that hurt, and there are those defeats that hurt a lot. For the Rocket, that of Wednesday evening at Place Bell is to be classified in the second category.
Updated yesterday at 11:42 p.m.
Why ? Because the Laval club had everything going for it on this hot evening: a very noisy crowd at the start of the evening, a Cayden Primeau in a state of grace to start, and also the luxury of the first goal of the match, scored by Rafaël Harvey-Pinard .
Then everything fell apart.
Photo François Roy, THE PRESS
Cayden Primeau
Yet, and usually, these factors can lead to a victory, but not this time. This time it was the visitors, the Springfield Thunderbirds, who tasted victory, by a score of 6-3.
For the Rocket, the result is painful for at least two reasons. First, the Springfield club grabbed a 2-1 lead in this series. Then the Rocket will have to return to Springfield if they have any hope of winning this series.
“Our start to the game was good,” noted forward Alex Belzile. We did a good job on the penalty kill, but it gets taxing, and they got their momentum from that. We can say what we want about the penalties, but we can’t give them five against three and five against four…”
The question of discipline, yet at the heart of the concerns at the Rocket, will have been of primary importance… in addition to sinking the club, in a certain way. The visitors didn’t score on the power play, but they had eight chances with the advantage of at least one player, against four for the Rocket.
“It’s a challenge to control our emotions,” added Belzile. We will have to because at five against five, I think we can play against them very well. »
Photo François Roy, THE PRESS
Tobie Paquette-Bisson and Matthew Peca
Harvey-Pinard saw something of the same thing.
“We lost control of our emotions, especially during the third period, admitted the forward. We should have managed that better… and we will have to come to the next game with a different mentality. It’s a good team on the other side, and we gave too many turnovers, it cost us dearly… ”
One could also add that this defeat hurts because of whoever is most responsible for it. Will Bitten, who seems on his way to becoming something of a cross between Dale Hunter and Brad Marchand, is the one who single-handedly sank the Rocket on Wednesday night, with nothing less than four goals, his club’s last four, including the sixth in an empty net.
His third goal and fifth of the visit, 5 min 59 s into the third period, hurt particularly badly; Bitten took advantage of a turnover from Harvey-Pinard to beat Primeau shorthanded. The Thunderbirds had just survived a three-on-five, just like the Rocket earlier.
After this fifth goal of the visit, we felt the energy of Place Bell go up in smoke, and the very noisy crowd at the start of the evening became very quiet.
The young striker Joshua Roy, inserted into the formation of the Rocket to replace the injured Gabriel Bourque, was rarely used, but he was still able to collect three shots on goal.
Photo François Roy, THE PRESS
Joshua Roy
“It’s a different style of play here, there’s less space on the ice and it’s more physical,” said the 18-year-old. But I’m not a stressed guy in life. I thought it was noisy at the start of the match, but I didn’t think about it afterwards…”
This is not what we will remember at the Rocket. What we will remember is the importance of better managing your emotions. “We received too many penalties, admitted coach Jean-François Houle. Our shorthanded play has been excellent; it should have given us wings, but it ended up helping them…”
But Houle, a philosopher, did not dwell too much on penalties, even bad ones. “You have to forget that one… I didn’t think we got too many bad punishments. Except perhaps the cross-check at [Nate] Schnarr. You can not do that. »