QMJHL - Drummondville Voltigeurs Sweep Montreal Juniors with 5-3 Victory
The Drummondville Voltigeurs picked up right where they had left off at the end of last night's contest against the Montreal Juniors in game four of round two play. The Voltigeurs, after easily taking game three by a score of 6-1 looked to sweep the series with a fourth consecutive win, thus ending the Juniors' inaugural season in the QMJHL.
All went swimmingly, if you were one of many Voltigeur fans in attendance at the Verdun Auditorium. If the Juniors were looking for the friendly confines of home ice, this was not necessarily the place to be as the cheers were generously sprinkled in Drummondville's favour. The Montreal fans, however, did not have much to cheer about.
Yannick Riendeau scored two powerplay goals, including a sweet forehand to backhand effort for his 13th and 14th of the playoffs and Gabriel Dumont scored a highlight reel, shorthanded, spin-a-rama effort, on Jake Allen who made the initial save but was beat as Dumont picked up his own rebound and backhanded it, top shelf.
The period would end with the Juniors in a 3 goal hole and the Voltigeurs seemingly sucking the life out of the fans and the Montreal squad as they were unable to muster anything in the way of a convincing offence and I'm sure that Coach Pascal Vincent would mention this fact during the intermission.
In the second period, Benoit Levesque would deepen the hole at 7:10 on a pretty 3-way give and go, but Montreal would temporarily restore life into the crowd as Guillaume Asselin would finally put one past Drummondville's backup goalie, Antoine Tardif. The second period would end 4-1 with a shot differential of 28-15, both in Drummondville's favour.
7:26 into the 3rd period, an end to end dangling skate by Pat O'Keefe ended up with a pass on the stick of Darick Ste-Marie which narrowed the Voltigeurs lead to just two and sparked an aggressive comeback attempt for the Juniors, who showed more life in those few minutes than they had all game. The comeback attempt however, would be short-lived, as only moments later, when Marc-Olivier Vachon was allowed to skate in on Jake Allen unchallenged and put a nifty backhander high, blocker side, past the Montreal netminder. Nick Layton would add to the tally with his 6th of the playoffs and although Jake Allen had been pulled with just under 2 minutes to go in the period, the Juniors would go on to lose in four straight to the powerful Drummondville Voltigeurs.
The turning point in this match was back in the first period where Montreal appeared to have a goal that would have made the game a 2-1 affair. Instead, the goal was disallowed and Darick Ste-Marie was assessed an interference penalty with Drummondville going on to score their 3rd goal of the period and taking the wind out of the Juniors' sails.
One wonders if this game's final result would have been different had the call gone in Montreal's favour as well as if Montreal had won game 2 in overtime when they had the chance, but the Juniors will have all summer to ponder this as for them, it is the end of the 2008/09 season.
And for some, it is the end of their stay in the QMJHL. Team captain Matt Fillier, Pat O'Keefe, Nick Layton and Angelo Esposito will now move on to the next phases of their hockey careers either at the university level or via the various NHL farm teams as Esposito (Atlanta) and Fillier (LA) will surely try out for their NHL teams this fall.
It is fitting then, that the game's 3 stars were chosen with the 20 year olds in mind as Pat O'Keefe, Nick Layton and Matt Fillier were given the game's 3 stars.
As for the Montreal Juniors as a whole, it is now a time of reflection, a time to look back at a fairly successful inaugural year and then on to retooling for the sophomore season in 2009/10.
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