As a three-game road trip wound down, the Laval Rocket found themselves facing a critical situation. The Rocket had battled hard, but failed to overcome an early two-goal deficit against Hartford on Friday night, losing 2-1 after beating Bridgeport on Wednesday.
With a slight injury to Riley McKay, the Rocket lineup remained the same as it had against the Wolf Pack, including Jakub Dobeš again getting the nod in net as the starter.
Even with travel overnight, the Rocket looked fresh right out of the gate using their speed to catch the Springfield Thunderbirds off-guard while opening up a heavy shot advantage in the early minutes. Sam Bitten tried to draw Riley Kidney into a penalty after the whistle went, but ended up being the only man sent to the box. Laval’s power play made the Springfield forward regret it as it opened the scoring. Sean Farrell found a seam to put a shot on goal, the rebound bounced to Mitchell Stephens and then over to Lias Andersson, and Andersson buried the shot behind Vadim Zherenko to make it a 1-0 game.
Despite controlling the opening half of the first period, the wheels soon started to fall off, starting with Olivier Galipeau heading to the box for roughing. While Laval killed off the minor penalty, the Thunderbirds refused to give the puck back to them, and Ryan Suzuki converted a feed from Adam Gaudette to tie the game up.
Less than a minute later, with Kidney in the box for slashing, Suzuki again brought misery to the Rocket. He quickly fed a faceoff win to Dylan Coghlan at the point, with the Springfield defenceman snapping his shot off the post and in to quickly make it a 2-1 game.
A chaotic first period continued with the Rocket answering back just over a minute later to tie the game up. Justin Barron grabbed a puck in the neutral zone and sent Andersson ahead on an odd-man rush with Philippe Maillet. Andersson flicked a pass across the crease, allowing Maillet to cut back across goal and lift his backhand by Zherenko.
The insanity from there continued as a Nathan Légaré was tossed away from the Springfield goal by Hunter Skinner, kicking off a surprising fight between Kidney and Mikhail Abramov, with the Rocket’s rookie forward more than holding his own.
It wasn’t the only fight of the period either, as Filip Cederqvist took exception to Leo Loof hitting him up high. Cederqvist got tossed to the ice for his troubles to put a cap on the first period. While the game was tied 2-2, the Rocket had an incredible 26-7 shot advantage as they entered the first intermission.
The dominance on the puck continued as they put two immediate chances on net, and drew another penalty in the process. The Thunderbirds’ penalty-killers did an admirable job of keeping the Rocket advantage to the perimeter, outside of a clean chance for Farrell.
Laval’s failed power play ended up being more costly than it originally seemed as the opportunistic Thunderbirds again struck twice less than a minute apart. First was Gaudette taking advantage of a missed assignment by Logan Mailloux to beat Dobeš and give Springfield the lead.
Forty-three seconds later, Barron found himself tied up with one opposing forward while William Trudeau found himself in no man’s land. Will Bitten recognized the situation, and casually roofed a falling backhand shot to make it a two-goal deficit for Laval.
Now trailing by a pair of goals and feeling the playoffs slip further out of their grasp, the Rocket began to fire everything they could on net. Aided by two late power-play chances the Rocket passed the 40-shot mark, but still were searching for a way back into the game. They entered the second intermission with 21 seconds of power play time left, and desperately needing an early goal to keep themselves in the game.
The brief power power play did little to help the Rocket cut into the Springfield lead, and as the play returned to even strength the defensive miscues continued. Under pressure in the defensive zone, Barron threw a pass right to a Thunderbirds forward along the boards. That turned into a rebound chance in front of Dobeš and Drew Callin swept it home to make it a 5-2 game.
To their credit, the Rocket continued to plug away and eventually found their next breakthrough chance. At the end of an extended offensive-zone shift, Mattias Norlinder flung a chance through traffic to the net, and fooled Zherenko to cut the deficit to two goals.
Almost immediately following Norlinder’s goal, Springfield found itself down two men, handing Laval a nearly two-minute five-on-three situation. In what has become a recent trend, the Rocket power play came up empty in a crucial situation.
To rub even more salt in the wound, less than a minute after the Rocket’s power play ended, Abramov broke in on a breakaway and quickly made it a 6-3 contest. That back-breaking goal was followed by Andersson throwing a reverse check on Coghlan, earning a game misconduct for his troubles.
Springfield again punished the Rocket with a power-play goal to run the score up to 7-3 and left the Rocket on the losing side of another weekend of important games.
Final Score: Springfield 7, Laval 3
The Rocket now head back to Laval to open a five-game homestand that will likely decide the fate of their season. Up first on their schedule is a Wednesday night clash with the Syracuse Crunch.
