Game 1 did not go as planned for the Laval Rocket. they lost 5-1 to the Charlotte Checkers in a game where every single mistake they made was punished instantly by their opponent. Perhaps more frustrating for the Rocket is that they felt taken advantage of as the game turned nasty in the final minutes, resulting in a mountain of misconduct penalties to end the night.
Those tempers did not settle at all overnight. The minute both teams took the ice for warmups they came together directly at centre ice. Trevor Carrick, who had butt-ended Xavier Simoneau the previous night continued to agitate while MacKenzie Entwistle spent a lengthy period jawing at Logan Mailloux as more Rocket players joined the crowd. Cooler heads prevailed, but the tone for the game was obvious: things were going to be nasty.
Pascal Vincent put a vote of confidence in his team, leaving the lineup unchanged from Game 1, including Cayden Primeau getting a second straight start to try to right the ship.
The early flow of the game was all Rocket once again as they dominated control of the puck, probing and looking for gaps to test Kaapo Kahkonen but being unable to solve him. Charlotte continued to run their gameplan of subtle and not-so-subtle interference to open up their own chances. Despite Jesse Puljujarvi blowing up Rafaël Harvey-Pinard 10 feet away from the puck, the officials allowed play to continue. The first penalty of the game was on the Rocket as Adam Engström was called for cross-checking, however in the scrum that followed, Marek Alscher also found himself in the box for the Checkers.
The Rocket continued to test the Checkers, but Kahkonen refused to budge between the pipes. It looked like Charlotte’s liberty-taking went too far as Michael Benning shoved Xavier Simoneau into his netminder, then delivered a pair of cross-checks to Simoneau’s face on the ice. In the end, thanks to Engström coming to Simoneau’s defence, it was a Charlotte power play.
Laval did well to kill off the minor penalty, keeping their heads above water after their strong start slowly fizzled out due to the penalties. However, with the play back at even strength, Joshua Roy caught a Checkers forward up high and took a seat for four minutes for high sticking.
Laval killed off 99% of Roy’s double-minor as the team looked primed to shift the momentum with a heroic penalty kill. As Roy stood up in the box, Carrick let a shot fly through traffic that beat Primeau to give the Checkers a late-first-period lead. As the horn sounded, Justin Sourdif took one last cheapshot at Oliver Kapanen, landing a high hit after the horn had gone, drawing a crowd while the teams headed to the locker room with the Rocket trailing by one.
Laval had a golden opportunity to kick off the second period as Charlotte took an interference penalty and handed the Rocket their first power play of the game. Instead of making up for their dismal Game 1 effort, the Rocket’s top power-play unit sputtered again. Logan Mailloux tried to do too much to get the puck in deep, resulting in a John Leonard short-handed rush, and another goal for the forward to double the Charlotte lead.
Things only got worse from there as the Rocket struggled to find a gear to get back into the contest, and Charlotte smelled the blood in the water. The early villain of Michael Benning struck quickly, finishing off a lengthy cycle inside the Rocket zone to run the score up to 3-0.
Before Laval could even regroup, Will Lockwood was left wide-open to convert a feed into a 4-0 goal that sent Primeau off the ice in favour of Jacob Fowler.
Because the score was out of hand, and because Charlotte had been allowed two games of full impunity, a cheapshot knocked Laurent Dauphin out of the game without a penalty called on the hit itself. Florian Xhekaj found himself given a 10-minute misconduct in the aftermath while Oliver Okuliar got two minutes for unsportsmanlike conduct. Before the Rocket could complete their power play, Lucas Condotta and Xavier Simoneau found themselves in the box to end the period as one team seemed to be the target of the officials.
Trailing by four goals, without their leading scorer, and the structure having disappeared, the Rocket had a mighty task ahead of them in the third period. Dauphin was officially ruled out for the rest of the night as the Rocket took the ice, hoping to dig deep and find some sort of comeback effort in front of their home fans.
An early Checkers penalty by Matt Kierstad handed them a huge opportunity once again, as a Mailloux-less power play took the ice. On the positive side of things, the man advantage did not give up a goal against this time, but still failed to best Kahkonen and were left staring at an insurmountable deficit still.
A strong defensive play by David Reinbacher allowed the Rocket to counter-attack quickly, with Kapanen fending off multiple Checkers to pass the puck off. Noel Hoefenmayer collected the puck along the blue line then fired a low, hard shot that beat Kahkonen to finally get the Rocket on the board with 14 minutes left in regulation.
Charlotte responded to this goal by having Leonard elbow Hoefenmayer in the head on one of the following shifts, which was uncalled once again, But a knee by Kyle Criscuolo on Owen Beck did not escape the eyes of the officials as Laval went back to the power play.
Laval’s best chance on the advantage was whistled down, despite the puck clearly being loose in the slot in front of the Charlotte net. It ended up being somewhat important as the Rocket power play never got going again, and as the penalty expired, the Checkers capitalized on another turnover to make it 5-1.
Charlotte continued its victory lap as Wilmer Skoog went for a Michigan attempt, drawing the ire of Zack Hayes and kicking off another massive scrum after the whistle, with the Rocket again finding themselves on the penalty kill. Before the Rocket could even begin their kill, Mailloux, Alex Barré-Boulet, and Simoneau all headed to the locker room, with the latter two being given 10-minute misconducts.
To keep the trend going, the officials tacked on another 10-minute misconduct for Xhekaj for reasons that were not explained as the final minutes arrived.
A late Rocket five-on-three power play allowed the officials to make it appear the game was called evenly. It also allowed Engström to feed Reinbacher for a second goal on the evening.
It was the slightest bit of consolation as the Rocket fell on home ice for the second time in as many nights, dropping them in a 0-2 hole for the series.
Final Score: Charlotte 5, Laval 2
CLT leads the series 2-0
The series now shifts to Charlotte, where the next three games are scheduled. Game 3 is set to take place on Sunday with a 4 PM ET puck drop. Due to the swath of injuries and underperforming players, it wouldn’t be shocking to see multiple lineup changes by Pascal Vincent.
