QUEBEC CITY, P.Q. — In a game where the battle was for second place overall in the QMJHL standings, Montreal played an almost perfect game with a solid performance from Jean-Francois Berube stopping all 26 shots ending the night with the first star.
Montreal’s victory was their third in as many attempts, and third one by one goal. Pascal Vincent the Montreal head coach was the first to be pleased by his player’s performance.
“Yes, I’m satisfied, we showed some maturity in the third period. We had lots of pressure having to kill five penalties against only one, our penalty kill made great job. As I said we showed great maturity to win the game but Jean-Francois Berube made big difference,” Montreal head coach said in his post game press conference.
Photo by Serge Poulin
Montreal began the game playing solid hockey not just because they scored the only goal of the game in the opening period but they put pressure on the Quebec defensemen forcing them to make mistakes.
Trevor Parkes scored beating Quebec goaltender Louis Domingue on his right side with a wrist shot at 11:57 of the opening period.
Montreal killed two penalties in the first period and five in the second forcing Berube to stay alert especially during the penalty to Nicolas Chouinard where he made big saves against Quebec veteran center Joel Champagne and Joe Dube.
Jimmy Appleby entered the game coming in relief of Domingue following what appeared to be a knee injury in the second portion of second period. Remparts netminder seem to be injured when he was hit by the puck inside left knee following a Montreal shot.
Analyzing the game Montreal head coach said, “In the second period I found we were ok, in the beginning of the third period we defend ourselves, after that we executed much better and our netminder did the job.”
On the losing side, veteran 20-year-old John Ady-Marchessault wasn’t happy about the team’s performance.
“Our ten goals against Victoriaville were goals where we drove to the net, we shot on goal and took rebounds, and tonight we didn’t do the little things,” Ady-Marchessault said.
Talking about opponent goaltender job Marchessault has been the first to admit his team didn’t test Berube. “We didn’t give him hard time, we knew he is a good goaltender but we made life easy for him tonight. We need to find solutions not making any excuses. Our strength is our speed and
Photo by Serge Poulin
Quebec head coach Patrick Roy wasn’t too happy to see his team unable to score goal in this game, “I expected to see a tight game but I’m surprised by the fact we aren’t able to score. I have to admit that I think we have several good scoring opportunities and with this type of quality scoring chances I thought we could score at least one goal. I’m also disappointed by our power play, our power play has been a turning point in this game, and I think we were too fancy on our power play we will have to be back to the basic”.
“The majority of our power play goals were scored with a shot from the point but we seemed to persist to look for the perfect play, goals scored down low will work some nights but against a team that works well in shorthanded situation its official we won’t be able to play offensively.”
Quebec won’t have too much time to ruminate this loss as they return to action tonight in another tough game hosting the Gatineau Olympiques that also lose 4-2 against Shawinigan.
Other games in the QMJHL
Drummondville 5 vs. Prince Edward Island 1
Saint John 11 vs. Moncton 2
Rouyn-Noranda 2 vs. Baie-Comeau 3
Gatineau 3 vs. Shawinigan 4
Rimouski 0 vs. Val-d’Or 1
Cape Breton vs. Victoriaville
Contact the author at: serge.poulin@prohockeynews.com
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