The Laval Rocket had a tough start to the season, but their hard work seems to be paying off. They will enter the 2024 portion of their schedule on a two-game winning streak, but more importantly as winners of six of their last eight games.
Laval beat the Syracuse Crunch 4-1 at Place Bell on Saturday, ensuring they come away from their three-games-in-three-days stretch with four of a possible six points.
“I’m still believing, everyone is believing in here,” said Rocket goaltender Jakub Dobeš. “It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks outside the locker room. I think we’ll be just fine but we need to keep working and stay humble. We’re a really talented group and we just need more experience and you can see it’s shaping up pretty well and we’ll come back to the rink next week and keep working hard.”
The game started in a way that set the tone for the rest of it. Tobie Paquette-Bisson had a big hit on Syracuse forward Mitchell Chaffee leading to Declan Carlile to respond and the two players dropped their gloves. The original hit was a boarding minor and no instigator was called.
The best chance on the penalty came from the Rocket shorthanded with a Gabriel Bourque and Lucas Condotta two-on-one. That led to a Crunch penalty and on the ensuing power play the Rocket took advantage.
After an Emil Heineman shot was saved, Sean Farrell deftly took the rebound from behind him and fired the puck into the open net to give Laval a 1-0 lead.
Sean Farrell ouvre la marque sur l’avantage numérique!
— Rocket de Laval (@RocketLaval) December 30, 2023
Farrell opens the scoring in Laval 🚀#GoRocket https://t.co/pi5tdpkMaf pic.twitter.com/n42zu2zRXP
Less than two minutes, after a Nathan Légaré roughing penalty, the Rocket doubled their lead when William Trudeau’s shot was tipped by Jan Myšàk for the shorthanded goal. It was Myšàk’s fifth goal of the season.
Dobeš made several big saves in the first period to preserve the two-goal lead. The Rocket penalty kill went 4/4 in the opening period which provided them with all the cover they needed.
The Rocket started the second period on the power play to extend their lead, but it was the Crunch that had the first chance but Dobeš again made the save. Later in the same power play, Arber Xhekaj fired a shot from the point through traffic and it beat Matt Tomkins to make it 3-0. It was Xhekaj’s second goal of the season.
The Xhekaj goal set off some fireworks. On the ensuing faceoff, actually before the faceoff, Xavier Simoneau and Daniel Walker got into an altercation, the two battled and eventually the two went off for roughing after a scrum that had punches thrown but no gloves dropped.
As the officials were putting Simoneau in the penalty box, Walker went after him again entering the Rocket penalty box. Eventually the two were separated and Walker ended up with an additional roughing penalty and a 10-minute misconduct for continuing an altercation. After being separated from the penalty box, he was engaging with the Rocket bench. Xhekaj, Logan Mailloux, and Gabriel Bourque were having none of it, though. The trio were waving goodbye to him as he left the ice to the locker room.
“He had been going after [Joshua Roy] two times for no reason and I did what I had to do,” said Simoneau.
Before the period ended, the Rocket added a fourth goal. Great passing on the power play led to a pass from Simoneau to Roy. The first shot was saved by Tomkins, but Roy made no mistake on the rebound to make it 4-0 with his 10th goal of the season.
Dobeš could not get the shutout, however. With only 2:31 remaining in the game Shawn Element fired a shot from the slot on a delayed penalty to make it 4-1. That was as close as the Crunch would come. Dobeš made 25 saves in the win.
The Rocket now have a few days off until they prepare for the Utica Comets next Friday and Sunday in Utica.
