PICHE STARTING IN NET FOR HERD

Goaltender Frederic Piche is expected to make his Halifax Mooseheads debut tonight against his former club, reports the team’s official Twitter account.

The Saint John Sea Dogs traded the 19-year old netminder to the Mooseheads on Thursday in exchange for fellow 19-year old ‘tender Mathieu Corbeil. It isn’t known if Corbeil will start tonight against his old club when the two teams do battle at the Metro Centre at 7:00 pm.

With Saint John this season, Piche had a record of 14-2-0-2, a goals against average of 2.56, and a save percentage of 0.910. His GAA is good for fourth overall in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League while his save percentage is ranked sixth.

“The telltale for goaltenders isn’t so much goals-against average, it’s save percentage,” said Halifax general manager Cam Russell about Piche in a trade perioid Q&A with Metro Halifax earlier this week. “It doesn’t matter who you’re playing against or for, save percentage tells it all. He’s above .900, we know him from the league the past couple of years and he’s just a good solid goaltender. Corbeil was just at a point where it wasn’t working out at all for him here in Halifax and he had to go … for his benefit.”

If Hollywood had control of this game, Piche, traded from the best team in the QMJHL to the fourth worst, would play the game of his life and pull off the upset win. Fortunately for the Sea Dogs they don’t – but the team has been put in this situation before.

Last season, the Sea Dogs dealt Marc-Antoine Gelinas to the Shawinigan Cataractes, choosing to go with experienced goaltender Marco Cousineau for the stretch run despite Gelinas having some of the best numbers in the league. The decision is still debated to this day.

In his return to Saint John, Gelinas played very well as the Cataractes defeated the No. 1 team in the Canada 3-1. The game will be remembered mostly for the bag skate the Sea Dogs were forced to do following the match.

Also last season, former Sea Dogs owned goaltenders Simon Giroux and Nathan Dunnett put on clinics against Saint John.

Will we see another great display of goaltending this evening? We shall see.

Photo Credit: Marc Henwood/Station Nation