Friday March 15. Last home game of the season for the Pétroliers in Laval.
It’s barely 5:30 p.m. and some spectators have already had time to eat their pizza in the Coliseum parking lot. We want to ensure a good seat for the match at 8 p.m.
A record crowd is expected against the Marquis de Jonquière. These supporters feel it: it will be a virile game, it will be exciting.
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says one of them, laughing.
It’s swarming more and more around the old amphitheater, and inside too. Time here seems to have stopped. It smells like the 70s and it’s perfect like that, the co-owner of Les Pétroliers tells us.
You renovate it, you put benches with cushions, and I tell you, there are fewer people!
swears Lucien Paquette.
18 h. The Marquis arrive with their captain Alexandre Picard, all smiles despite the five hours by bus that separate them from Jonquière.
In the LNAHNorth American Hockey League, we don’t count the kilometers. The six teams in the league (there were around fifteen in the early 2000s) are spread across the four corners of the province: Laval, Jonquière, Thetford Mines, Sorel, Rivière-du-Loup and Saint-Georges.
Often, players live far from their team. Picard, for example, lives in Quebec, and not in Jonquière.
There LNAHNorth American Hockey League, it is a league of workers of all kinds: lawyers, police officers, firefighters, carpenters, doctors, etc. Most players have full-time jobs and play matches on weekends.
In Laval, the visiting team’s locker room definitely lacks love and space. Which doesn’t seem to bother Donald Brashear and his family.
Because yes, the former member of the Montreal Canadiens still plays hockey at 52 years old.
The one who has more than 1000 matches in the NHLNational Hockey League is not the only one from the Bettman circuit. The Marquis even have two others: Patrick Bordeleau, a former Colorado Avalanche, and Alexandre Picard, a first-round pick who played in Columbus.
We said the same thing 10 years ago and we repeat it: the caliber of the LNAHNorth American Hockey League is continually climbing while ice boxing duels and skidding are on the decline.
The vast majority of current players have already spent time in the Maritimes Quebec Junior Hockey League (QMJHL). Several have also gone through the American League, the ECHL or the European circuits, like Alexandre Picard.
The striker is playing a fourth season in the LNAHNorth American Hockey League. However, he had no intention of being part of it after his stay in Europe.
In my head, I still had the fights, the Jon Mirastys, the Joël Thériaults. The games lasted almost five, six hours because there were too many battles, he relates. That didn’t interest me.
“ My first game, I thought it would be easy, almost a garage league. I really realized one thing: this is no longer the league it used to be. »
Photo: Radio-Canada / Pascal Ratthé
There are a lot of young people now, which speeds up the game
adds the 37-year-old hockey player.
Many do not hesitate to compare the caliber to that of the ECHL. Others think it is even higher because the players are more experienced (the average age is around 30) and some have played at a high level. The difference? Training, almost non-existent in the LNAHNorth American Hockey League.
If we had an all-star team, says Alexandre Picard, and we practiced for a while, I’m sure we would be able to play against an American League club. Maybe not the strongest, but middle or bottom of the rankings.
