As a difficult February began to enter its final days, the Laval Rocket found themselves in one of their toughest stretches in quite some time. Ahead of them lay three games against divisional opponents, starting with the Toronto Marlies on Wednesday night, and just behind them was a nasty three-in-three weekend in Central New York. While the Marlies were sat 15 points back of the Rocket in the standings, every single game between the two sides had been tightly contested all season.
Making matters even tougher for the Rocket was that they entered Wednesday night’s contest short-handed in a few positions. Jacob Fowler was still out sick, giving the net back to veteran Kaapo Kähkönen with Hunter Jones serving as the backup once again. On defence, Adam Engström was ruled out for the next four weeks after sustaining an upper-body injury against Utica on Sunday, which left many of his duties to Marc Del Gaizo and David Reinbacher.
With Laurent Dauphin also nursing a minor injury the Rocket shuffled lines slightly as Sammy Blais joined Sean Farrell and Alex Belzile. Jared Davidson returned and slotted in with Lucas Condotta and Xavier Simoneau on the third line.
Whether it was due to the long road trip over the weekend or a possible illness still working its way through the locker room, the start was less than ideal for the Rocket. Passes were being missed at both ends of the ice and Toronto took advantage of that to open the scoring. After an icing, the Marlies kept the puck hemmed in the Rocket zone with William Villeneuve firing a high shot on net, and Luke Haymes deflected it by Kähkönen uncontested.
The Rocket continued to struggle at generating any sustained pressure, while Toronto was able to lock Laval into their cycle with relative ease on every shift. While trying to break some of the Marlies’ pressure, Kähkönen fired a puck straight out of play to put the Rocket on the first penalty kill of the game. The Toronto advantage did not last long however, as the veteran know-how of Belzile drew a penalty while short-handed to make it a four-on-four stretch.
The extra space helped the Rocket close the gap in terms of shots, but when play returned to five-on-five it was clear they were still the second-best team in the period. Despite the uneven start, it took just the smallest moment of opportunity for the Rocket to strike and even up the score. Owen Beck quickly moved a puck up to a streaking Luke Tuch heading into the offensive zone. Tuch settled the puck for a moment before firing a heavy snapshot off the post and in to level the game late in the first period.
Tuch’s goal gave the Rocket some life as they headed to the locker room for the first intermission, but they were in need of a stronger effort entering the second period.
For the opening few minutes of the second frame, the Rocket found that effort, but some frustration or maybe just trying to get under the skin of the Marlies led Sammy Blais to fire a shot on net after an offside whistle. On the ensuing power play, the Rocket were lucky to escape unscathed as Borya Valis ripped a wide-open look off the crossbar but thankfully not past Kähkönen. With Blais out of the box the Rocket offence went right back to work as they peppered Dennis Hildeby with shots, but the game remained a 1-1 stalemate.
While the Rocket were taking command of the game, they were very clearly not in the good graces of the officiating crew. After an extra few pokes on Kähkönen drew a response from his teammates, the Rocket found themselves as the ones short-handed as Blais took another seat for cross-checking. Thankfully for Blais, his penalty-killing teammates were again up to the task as they smothered the Marlies’ man advantage and went back to work at even strength.
The penalties had a marked impact on the Rocket’s attack as they were again struggling to find consistent shifts, and before long found themselves back on the penalty will with just under three minutes left to play in the second period. Despite some great chances short-handed by Beck and Condotta, the Toronto man advantage finally struck as Valis teed up Haymes for his second goal of the game to push it to 2-1.
Before the period could reach its conclusion, the Rocket finally managed to earn a full two-minute power play with Mark Johnstone going off … or so they thought. After the whistle, Blais said something to an official after Marc Del Gaizo was hauled down trying to move the puck and cancelled out the Rocket man advantage. Blais’s penalty left the Rocket heading into the second intermission down a goal, and feeling extremely frustrated with the officiating on the evening.
Things went from bad to worse for the Rocket in the opening minutes of the third as Laval failed to break down the Marlies’ defensive structure, and their every mistake ended up punishing them. Nate Clurman lost an edge as he tried to clear the puck, seemingly injuring himself in the process. The loose puck was scooped up by Toronto and Jacob Quillan tucked a shot under the glove of Kähkönen to make it a 3-1 contest.
It wasn’t long before another failed dump-in attempt turned into an odd-man rush for the Marlies. Matthew Barbolini broke in with Haymes, and after weaving a pass around William Trudeau it was Haymes finishing off his hat trick to make it 4-1.
The one-team penalty parade continued as Sean Farrell was called for tripping on a play where his opponent appeared to hug Farrell’s stick and then pitch forward onto the ice to draw a call. The Rocket penalty-killers took care of Farrell’s minor penalty, but with under five minutes left to play there wasn’t much runway left for the Rocket to try to claw back into the contest.
After yet another failed attempt to clear their zone and the Marlies nearly scoring again, the Rocket decided to take their pound of flesh after Mark Johnstone crashed into the net. What resulted was a mountain of ejections only against the Rocket as David Reinbacher and Sammy Blais were removed from the game, despite Reinbacher getting punched in the back of the head. Beck earned two minutes for cross-checking and to cap it all off, Rocket head coach Pascal Vincent was ejected for abuse of officials.
Toronto ended the game with a five-on-three power play, and that bled out the rest of the game clock, sending the Rocket to a second straight loss.
Final Score: Toronto 4, Laval 1
Laval will head out on the road next heading into the weekend, with two more North Division clashes in front of them on Friday and Saturday. First up on Friday night is another match with the Rochester Americans, with the Rocket claiming an overtime win just week ago/ Puck drop is set for 7 PM ET.
