Mathéo Nobert was the only one of the eight skaters used in the shootout who threaded the needle, beating Raphaël Précourt with a beautiful feint. At the other end, Nathan Lecompte, Maxim Massé, Kassim Gaudet and Émile Guité were unable to beat former Sags, Rémi Delafontaine.
The Sags were leading 3-0 when they saw the Armada tie the game. We will come back to this, since Emmanuel Vermette believed he had given his team the winning goal with less than two minutes to play, beating Delafontaine with a backhand.
Except that Justin Carbonneau scored his second of the evening with a dozen seconds left on the clock, which was the locals’ first power play goal during the evening, on their seventh attempt.
It was captain Kassim Gaudet who was thinking in the dock, for an obstructive gesture on the goalkeeper. A decision that could have been a matter of debate, considering that the attacker was pushed by an Armada player.
“We created a few turnovers that hurt us and we took a few penalties that hurt us as well. Were they all deserved? In my opinion, no, analyzed Sags coach Yanick Jean late Friday evening. The key play of the match came when Gaudet suffered a double-check, before finding himself on the goalkeeper. That said, we could still have done certain things better before that, we made life more complicated for ourselves. I think we were heading for our own downfall.”
Ahead 3-0 after 40 minutes of play and offering an efficient game, the Saguenéens saw the Armada come from behind in the third. Olivier Filaj got the ball rolling with a precise shot, imitated by Justin Carbonneau, from the same recipe, with 12 minutes to go.
Captain Jonathan Fauchon then thrilled the 2,729 spectators present by scoring on a breakaway, five minutes after Carbonneau’s success.
In control
The Sags, however, started the match with their foot pressed on the accelerator. Connor Haynes gave his team the lead after two minutes by deflecting a shot from the point of Alonso Gosselin, good for his first goal in the Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League (QMJHL)
The Haynes trio, completed by Nathan Lecompte and Emmanuel Vermette, continued the excellent work started from the first second. On the forecheck, Vermette spotted Lecompte at the top of the slot, and #42 fired a shot that surprised Rémi Delafontaine, on the glove side.
The last 15 minutes of the first period offered play that occasionally resembled a boules machine. Chances on each side, good decisions with the puck, less good ones, three numerical advantages for the locals, two for the visitors.
All that being said, both clubs returned to the locker room with a score of 2-0 for Chicoutimi.
“I loved the effort, the physical involvement and our level of competition,” confirmed Yanick Jean. It’s not that we played on our heels in the third, we had our share of chances to score. We got beaten in certain phases of the game in the third while we hadn’t been beaten at this level during the first two periods.
The execution of the Saguenéens made the difference in the second period. The Laurentian fleet was limited to six shots towards Raphaël Précourt, while Delafontaine was peppered with 14 pucks. Félix Gagnon scored the big goal with almost a minute to play.
The Jonquiérois managed to put the stick on the puck, through heavy traffic, to reach the plateau of 15 goals this season. In the game, Patrick Murphy paid the price, taxes included, by suffering a severe double-check from Zachary Wheeler. Murphy grimaced and the refs called nothing.
Korney Korneyev thought he had scored a few moments earlier. The Kazakh cut to the net, before placing the puck in the back of the goal, but his skate hit that of Delafontaine, who found himself in his semi-circle. The officials immediately refused the goal, before validating their decision after a review on the famous tablet.
The little guys from the Saguenéens play one last match before Christmas, Saturday afternoon, at the Videotron Center in Quebec, against the Remparts. On December 1, the Red Devils won 6-2 over the Chicoutimi team.
