Oct 25 Juniors Get Lion's Share of Goals in Win over Victoriaville Tigres 7-3

Sometimes, there's no explaining it, but when one team is destined to win against another, you just have to go with it. The last time these two teams met, Montreal dealt the Tigres a 8-4 loss in front of their home crowd. While it was the Victoriaville Tigres who scored first with only 28 seconds gone in the first period, Montreal would do a bit of roaring themselves en route to another declawing of the Tigres,  but this time at home.

The worse case scenario occurred for the Juniors at the 28 second mark of the first when a failed clearing attempt by Pat O'Keefe, allowed a turnover that saw the Tigres' 16 year old rookie,Brandon Hynes receive the puck right in front of Jake Allen and as Allen went down, put it past him, five-hole for Hynes' 10th of the year.

The Juniors responded to the wake-up call with brio. Three minutes and change after the Tigres' goal, Nick Layton brokeout down the ice and orchestrated a wonderful tic-tac-toe play with Luke Adamand Matt Fillier resulting in Fillier tapping the puck past a completely beaten Luc Boivin. Moments later, and with the Tigres down a man, Luke Adam would get his 9th of the season off a Nick Layton shot that took a Juniors-friendly bounce behind the net. The Juniors would increase their lead to 3-1 while again on the power-play. Credit the Montreal D with good puck movement as Demitri Kostromitin seemed to be making uo for lost time, getting his second assist of the game with a pass to Matt Fillier who beat newly inserted goalie Kevin Poulin. Aside from the fact that the juniors' fourthgoal was also on the power-play, it was a carbon copy version of their first,with Layton, Adam and Fillier combining once again,providing Fillier with his first hat trick of the season.

In a Junior dominated 1st period, the Tigres had one power-play opportunity, but the 2 best scoring chances during that span went to Montreal, specifically Matt Fillier who had two break-away chances thwarted by Kevin Poulin, who kept the game within reach for the Tigres.

The second period will, from this moment on be referred to as the Allen show. While the Juniors had done a fine job limiting the Tigres to only 9 shots in the first period, the Tigres would outwork the Juniors on puck possession and pepper Allen with 17 in the 2nd. Montreal, with the help of Allen, was able to kill off it's second stint with a man down during the second period, but it would seem that the third time would be a charm for Victoriaville as Brandon Hynes swatted away relentlessly in the midst of a scrum in front of Allen's crease for his 2nd of the game and 11th of the year.

Montreal would start the third as aggressively as they had the first, which resulted in a power-play opportunity right out of the gates, which resulted in a power-play goal by Guillaume Asselin. Asselin will never see them any easier than this one as a bouncing buck squirted out of a melee and landed square on his stick as he was at the right of Goalie Poulin who was covering the left post at the time.

Asselin would himself spend two minutes in the box for tripping at the 5 minute mark and the Tigres would capitalize as Joel Chouinard would let a shot from the blue line rip, beating Allen cleanly. The Juniors would have a chance to increase their lead when a penalty shot was awarded to Benjamin Rubin who was hauled down from behind, but in the ensuing attempt, just ran out of real estate and wasn't able to get a quality shot off.

The Juniors would, in fact, add a goal at the halfway point of the period , Matthew Brenton, profiting off the hard work of Vincent Bourgeois who carried the puck into the zone from his own end.

The Tigres would again go on the power-play, the result of Samuel Fortier being ejected as the instigator in a fight that had two willing parties. This would be the first of many penalties these teams would exchange this period. But it would be Montreal who would kill off their penalties and score on the Tigres'. Montreal would make it 7-3 after great puck control in the offensive zone spearheaded by Luke Adam who managed to skate around the Tigres zone unchallenged before he passed it back to thepoint where Kostromitin took a hard slap-shot that was too hot for Poulin to handle and Nick Layton pounced on the loose puck and put it away, top shelf. 

And so the final score after 3 periods was 7-3 with the Juniors going 5 for 5 on the power-play and letting in only 2 of the 5 chances they gave the Tigres with the man-advantage.

"We really bought in as a team what coach was telling us this last week" said Captain Matt Fillier. "He worked us hard and showed us that hard work would pay off in the end." When I asked Luke Adam about his 4 point night and the difference between this and the last game where he had as many chances but came up empty, he quickly responded "tonight I got the bounces, it would be nice if we could play Victoriaville all the time." referring to the fact that he has 9 points in his last 2 games against the Tigres.

I made mention to Coach Pascal Vincent of his team's heeding of his wishes and work ethic and asked him if he was going to take it a little easier on them before they head out on the road to meet Val D'or and Gatineau. "No." was the short version of his reply. "If it isn't broken, then we are not going to fix it"

Tags: Jake Allen \ LHJMQ \ Luke Adam \ Matt Fillier \ Montreal juniors \ Pascal Vincent \ QJMHL \ victoriaville Tigres