Shawinigan ties series against Quebec at 1-1

QUEBEC CITY P.Q. — Shawinigan came out and played a much better game on Saturday night winning 4-3 over the Quebec Remparts to tie the series at 1-1. From the opening period to the end of the game, Game 2 was a completely different game than in Game 1. Five goals were scored, three at even strength by Shawinigan, two by Quebec with a man advantage. As in Game 1, Shawinigan was the first to get on the scoreboard when Cataractes right winger Maxime Legault’s wrist shot beat Quebec goaltender Charles Lavigne at 4:58. With Shawinigan center David Labrecque in the penalty box for delay of game, Quebec jumped on the opportunity and scored the tying goal. Mikhail Stefanovich beat Cataractes netminder Timo Pielmeier with a wrist shot that find his way past Pielmeier’s glove side at 6:36. Shawinigan regained the lead when Lavigne was beaten with a shot from an impossible angle by Gabriel Lemieux at 8:49. Marc-Olivier Vallerand, who came out from the boards with the puck, beating Pielmeier with a shot from the slot, bringing both teams back to square one at 2-2. Quebec defenseman Alexandre Neron looked like a cone when Mathiew Pistilli got by him and beat Lavigne glove side at 18:19. Both teams returned to their respective dressing rooms with Shawinigan leading 3-2 at the end of the first period. Quebec came out in second period and tied the score at 3-3 when John-Audy Marshessault received a great pass from Vallerand, beating Pielmeier with only 33 seconds gone in the second. Both teams exchanged scoring chances forcing both goaltenders to make great saves and prevented the other team from breaking the tie, but with 2:06 left in the period, Mathiew Pistilli got his second goal of the game at 18:34, a goal that would become the game winning goal since neither team scored in the third period. Cataractes head coach Eric Veilleux seem to be pleased with his teams effort, but he also knows his players will need to played better even better at home if they are to win the series. “We worked better, we worked harder. In third period we found some energy, we have to play like that. We did short shifts, we were on the puck more than in the first four periods we played here.” When asked if he didn’t see his true team in the first game, Veilleux replied, “It was better. I think we tried to be to fancy on our power play opportunities. We look for the perfect play. We tried to control the puck too much. The good thing is, we made some line changes and tried to get scoring chances at even strength. In fact, we almost got all of our scoring chances at five-on-five.”   When talking about playing with confidence, Veilleux was the first to admit that his team didn’t play with much of it. “We have things that we need to be corrected. We still have some players who didn’t play with total confidence. We have some players who are able to give us more. I’m not the one who names players, I keep it in the dressing room.” Shawinigan came to Quebec with the clear intention of winning the first game, but didn’t instead winning Game 2. When addressing the situation in front of the reporters Veilleux said, “Look against Gatineau. We lost the second game. I wasn’t too happy about it, but the way things turned out today, if it was the contraire, I wouldn’t be too happy.” For Quebec Head Coach Patrick Roy, he wasn’t too happy about the way his team played in the third period. “We have some aspects of the game that I’m not too happy about it, but I have some others that I’m happy about. I’m not happy about the fact that we only had six shots on goal, even if the Cataractes worked well, we have to go to the net with the puck, instead we looked for the perfect play.” Another aspect of the game Patrick Roy didn’t like was fact that the team worked well in front of Lavigne. “It seems to take a great goaltending performance to have a chance to win a game. That’s disappointing for me.” said the former Avalanche netminder. “It was 3-2 after one, we tied it in the second and they made it 4-3, but the turning point in this game came in third period when we had two power plays where we made bad decisions with the puck. Instead of shooting on net, we tried to make too many passes. We should keep it simple, we looked for the perfect play, and against a team like Shawinigan, on the power play the guys need to go in front of the goaltender. On the other hand, what I think is positive is the fact that we kept Cedric Lalonde-McNicoll out of the scoring sheet and our penalty kill shut down their power play.” Shots on goal: Shawinigan 34 Quebec 22 Power plays opportunity: Shawinigan 0-4 Quebec 2-6 Three stars of the game: 1-Mathiew Pistilli (Sha.) 2- Samuel Grouxl (Que.) 3- Maxime Macenauer (Sha.). Contact the author at: serge.poulin@prohockeynews.com