The Saguenéens of Chicoutimi have suffered a 4-3 loss in the hands of Tigers of Victoriaville, Friday, at the Center Georges-Vézina. The Centre-du-Québec team showed up simply more productive.
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In a duel between two low-ranked teams, the Sags applied pressure from the start of the game. The Tigers were overwhelmed, but that didn’t stop them from getting into the scoring first. Édouard Carrier took advantage of a turnaround from captain Michaël Pellerin to calm the enthusiasm of the locals.
Emmanuel Vermette tried to liven up the show with a check on a visitors’ defender. However, the forward was chased away and Victoriaville doubled their lead. Justin Sullivan completed a perfect tic-tac-toe on the power play to make it 2-0. Carl Mallette’s men threw a real shower of cold water on the Blues by scoring two more goals late in the first period.
Great comeback
Despite the score, the Sags continued to do a good job in offensive territory. In the middle of the second twenty, Julien Hébert thought he had scored his first goal since December 2021. However, the goal was disallowed by the officials. A few moments later, the Saguenéens recovered to make it 4-1 thanks to Matteo Mann’s goal. The Chicoutimi team came back into the game with the help of Félix Bédard who jumped on a return in front of the net. Defender Matteo Mann picked up his second point of the night on the streak.
Michaël Pellerin allowed the Sags to believe it by going 4-3, with less than two minutes left to play. Eventually, the Tigers held on to win 4-3.
A lack of opportunism
These are not the chances that were lacking for the representatives of Saguenay. However, the missed opportunities played a very bad trick on Chicoutimi. In the Sags’ last four games, they have averaged 3.5 goals. Also, Tigers starting goaltender Nathan Darveau was solid stopping 35 of 38 shots he faced.
Les Bleus will take the road towards Victoriaville to face the Tigres once again on Sunday April 10 at 4 p.m.
BDV : The Saguenéens suffered an offensive outage against the Tigres on Friday (Roger Gagnon Archives)