Dec 05 Gatineau Olympiques Defeat Montreal Juniors 3-0

The last time the Montreal Juniors played a game prior to today was Saturday, November 29th, a game that saw them end their winning streak at 3 as they fell to Huskies in Rouyn Noranda in overtime. The Gatineau Olympiques, on the other hand, were fresh off an impressive road win, soundly beating the Foreurs of Val D'Or last night by a score of 7-4. The question: Would it be a case of one team being rusty after such a long idle period or would the other be tired from playing in back to back road games? Or better yet, which team would step up, regardless of the obvious, plausible future excuse? The answer? Gatineau took an early lead, padded it and rode their way to a perfect road victory.

Montreal did their best to shake off the cobwebs, dominating most of the play in the first period. The teams exchanged power-plays on a few occasions with neither side being all that impressive in the early goings. Gatineau, however, took control of the game after 17 minutes, scoring twice to end the period. Although being outshot 7-4 in the period, they first got on the board when Hugo Laporte let a shot rip from the point after Montreal lost a defensive zone faceoff. Laporte's laser beat Jake Allen glove-side on a shot he might not have seen due to plenty of traffic in front of him. Then with 9 seconds left in the period and Montreal a man down, Paul Byron's shot from the point was saved by Allen, but the rebound went uncleared and Alexandre Quesnel put the puck into the open side and Gatineau skated off the ice with a 2 goal 1st period lead.

Only 40 seconds into the 2nd period, Byron added another assist to his stats when he won a battle in the Montreal corner against Alex Wall and fed the puck into the slot where Jean-Philippe Chabot put it past Allen, blocker side. The Juniors, who were caught pinching in, trying to erase a 2 goal deficit, were now down 3-0 and try as they might have, the puck was just not bouncing for them as Gatineau took the momentum and stifled any Juniors' attempts. Montreal's best chance came at 12:36 when Matt Fillier and Taylor MacDougall were able to break away on a two on one situation. Fillier's eventual shot beat Maxime Clermont but rang off the post. The Olympiques would outshoot the juniors 12-4 in the period.

The third period would change nothing as Gatineau went into major shut-down mode and the Juniors were not able to mount any kind of offensive threat.

Montreal, whose power-play had come on of late, was unable to muster anything in the 5 attempts they would get while Gatineau went 1-3 when given the opportunity on the man-advantage. One would think that this would be an aspect the Juniors will be looking at yet again as the game could have had a much different tone to it had at least one chance been capitalized on.

Montreal's schedule doesn't get much easier this coming week. As of tomorrow, they will be in Shawinigan to face the first place Cataractes in a home and away series  as they come back home on Wednesday for the rematch. They then face the Foreurs of Val D'Or on Friday, however, they will be without the services of both Angelo Esposito and Jake Allen as they will be off trying to make the roster for team Canada in the upcoming World Juniors Tournament. The good news, perhaps, is that at least they will be kept active and focused in order to maintain their above .500 status in the "Q".

photo by Amanda Stein

Tags: Alex Wall \ Angelo Esposito \ Gatineau Olympiques \ Jake Allen \ LHJMQ \ Matt Fillier \ Montreal juniors \ QMJHL