GRANBY, Québec – Without surprise, the Sherbrooke Saint-François beat the Rivière-du-Loup CIMT in the semifinals of the Ligue nord-américaine de hockey. The champion team of the regular season is now waiting for the name of its opponent in final.
While the Saint-Georges CRS Express lead the Saguenay Marquis three games to one in the other semifinal, the Sherbrooke players are resting after they eliminated Rivière-du-Loup in four straight games.
Two of those went to overtime and three were decided by one goal.
Last Saturday, at home, Rivière-du-Loup led 3-1 with five minutes to play in the third period when veteran Rémi Royer got a five-minute penalty for slashing Éric Perricone. Mathieu Dumas and Grégory Dupré scored during the power play and sent the game to overtime.
Then, defenceman Denis Desmarais beat Loïs Lacasse on a slap shot from the blue line to give Sherbrooke the win.
Denis Desmarais Photo courtesy of the LNAH
“I know what I did but I didn’t deserve a five-minute penalty,” said an angry Royer. “Maybe it was a two-minute penalty but certainly not five minutes.”
“We deserved that win and we deserve to be in final”, said Sherbrooke’s coach Éric Dandenault.
Dandenault will keep an eye on Thursday night’s game in Saguenay, when the Marquis will try to avoid elimination. Saguenay will play without tough guy Louis-Philippe Charbonneau, who was suspended for the rest of the playoffs and the complete 2010-2011 season.
During the warm-up, last Saturday in Saint-Georges, Charbonneau went too far. He hit opponents with his stick, he threw a chair (!) on the ice and he threw a puck. The suspension is severe, said LNAH officials, because this is not Charbonneau first offence.
Saguenay also will play without Matthew Ménard (eight games) while Saint-Georges will play without Jean-François Laplante (four games), Vincent Grondin (two games), Brandon Christian, Érick Lajoie and Cody Doucette (one game each). Each of them were suspended following the fights and violent incidents that punctuated Saint-Georges’ victories Friday and Saturday.
“It’s sad because we had a nice, clean match-up before all this,” said Saguenay coach Serge Forcier. “The LNAH try to give itself a new image, but people won’t take us seriously after those things.”
For sure, the Marquis will have to get much better performances from their goalies if they want to get back in the series. Maxime Gougeon and David Guerrera gave up 20 goals in the last two games.
Contact Michel.Tasse@prohockeynews.com
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