QUEBEC CITY P.Q. — When looking at the QMJHL rankings on paper, nothing appears to be wrong for the Quebec Remparts. They have dominated the division and are third in the overall league standings. Inconsistency is the perfect word when qualifying the Remparts performances. The team appears leaderless on the ice and someone needs to take charge.
Some examples of the Remparts inconsistency were during their past two performances on Saturday December 5th against Val-d’Or Foreurs when they lost 5-2 and their 6-5 shootout victory over the Rimouski Oceanic on Sunday afternoon.
The Foreurs came into Quebec minus seven players, three of them were their top performers, Jonathan Hazen, Marco Scandella and Maxime Sauve, and still won the game. Turnovers, mostly in the defensive zone, led to the Foreurs’ first two goals by Keven Guerette-Charland just at the 9:24 and 5:10 marks of the first period.
Trailing by two after one period, they never played like a team that thought they have a chance to come back in the game.
Roy said his team “Simply disrespected our opponent” after another deceptive performance in front of 11,584 fans.
“Players possibly looked at the other lineup seeing that they (Val-d’Or) missed seven players, three of their best, so they probably said to themselves it would be an easy one tonight.” said the Remparts head coach
“We have to analyze each game and this one for me was the fact that we didn’t respect our opponent, we thought it would be easy. This morning Lapy (assistant coach Martin Laperriere) and I discussed things and Martin said to me that lots of players looked at the standing and said to themselves, we are third overall; the Foreurs are 15th in the standings so the players took it possibly for granted.
“To lose the game is deceiving but on the other hand it showed that the line between winning and losing is very thin. If you aren’t ready to play, you aren’t ready to sacrifice yourself, that’s it. I left Gilbert Stefanovich on the bench. We want more intensity from them; we want them to be more competitive.”
The kind of leadership that Roy wants to see must come from inside the locker room.
“It’s up to them to get out of these tough times; we need to see someone take the leadership…I will help them look for that because I’m convinced that what we missed a year ago at the end of the year when I kept the rope high. This year if I can find leadership inside the room, guys will never give up. I have to find a way to look for that. If I found out the way, I’m convinced we will become a better team.”
On Sunday afternoon, Quebec needed a shootout just to earn an additional point in the standings, but even then the team didn’t play with conviction against Rimouski. The Oceanic came to Quebec after being trounced 6-1 against Drummondville the night before but played much better in Quebec.
“It’s more than a point in the standings,” Rimouski head coach Clement Jodoin said after the game. “You say it’s a point but for me it’s more than a point, it’s a golden point. It was our fourth game in five days. We played in Drummondville, Victorialville, Montreal, than we came here today. Often you get four points out of eight but it wasn’t a great indication of how we played. We performed better than the points we had. All two points you can earn before the holiday is the golden points cause the more mature team will detach and we will have more difficulties.”
“It wasn’t a great performance, I don’t know why but we didn’t play like usually. We played so soft this weekend.” admitted Remparts right winger Dmitry Kugryshev after Quebec’s shootout win.
After seeing both teams trade goals in the opening period, Peter Straka (2 goals in the game) opened the scoring for Rimouski at 15:37 but Mikhail Stefanovich tied the game at one at 17:30. Quebec ended the first period dominating play with an 11-5 shots on goal advantage.
Quebec came out very strong in the second period scoring the first two goals of the period to take a 3-1 lead. They would go on to score three times in the period but the Oceanic also scored three times on 17 shots tying the score at 4-4 after two periods.
After both teams traded goals in the third period and neither team scored in overtime, it took a shootout to finally seal the win for Quebec. Kelsey Tessier beat Matthew Dopud in the third shootout attempt to give the additional point to Quebec.
“We found a way to win the game hoping we can get out of that bad sequence,” Roy said after the game visibly not entirely satisfied with his team performance. “We definitely need to play much better in our defensive zone. We committed to many mistakes; the aspect that killed us was we gave too many turnovers. If you look at the goals we gave up tonight it was often due to turnovers. At the same time I’m happy to see the performance of David Gilbert’s line with Tessier and Stefanovich, especially Tessier in the shootout.
Still, some of Roy’s players didn’t play up to expectations. Veteran Marc-Olivier Vallerand saw most of the game from the bench.
“I forgot him. He is a veteran and one of the leaders on this team…he had the chance to block a shot but he refused to go in the line of the shot. If I ask certain things of a veteran, I won’t send a message if I penalize a rookie.”
The organization works hard to put the best team on the ice so before making any decisions they will try to do the necessary things that need to be done in order to get the type of success that they should have.
Jean Philippe Gagnon was in the net to start the game against the Oceanic but was pulled after giving up four goals on eight scoring chances. Peter Dalmas came on in relief and did well considering the situation.
“As far as I’m concern, I didn’t buy the players attitude. That’s what bugs me. I understand that our players look the standings. We are third overall…we know what we have to go through to go there. So if you ask me to be happy in the circumstances like that I can’t. I can’t be happy just because we are in third place overall. Wearing the Quebec Remparts jersey is different than everywhere else.”
“The Quebec Remparts standards are higher and unfortunately for the players we want to win every night. You have to pay a price if you want to play for this logo. Ask any player where they want to come and play and their answer will be at le Colisee Pepsi. With the crowd like we have, the ambiance, but it seems that our players don’t understand that yet. If we want to go far, if we want to go to the distance, we need more than that. We need guys who get the puck out of our end, guys that drive to the net, guys that complete their checks. We need guys to keep up their concentration to make the right play.”
Contact the author at: serge.poulin@prohockeynews.com
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