GATINEAU, Que. – Well, that’s more like it.
The Saint John Sea Dogs dominated the Gatineau Olympiques on Monday night at the Robert Guertin Centre, beating the home team 5-0 in Game Three of the President’s Cup final. The Sea Dogs are now the owners of a 2-1 series lead in the best-of-seven championship matchup.
It was by far the Dogs’ best game of the series so far. They were in control for the majority of the match and stunned the Gatineau faithful as their offense finally came alive.
Saint John didn’t open the scoring until the final second of the first period when Stephen MacAulay scored yet another clutch goal to give his team a 1-0 lead heading into intermission. Although the Dogs only beat Maxime Clermont once, they fired 18 shots compared to Gatineau’s five.
In the second period, Jonathan Huberdeau ended his goalless drought with a marker at 1:49. Then, at 9:40, Aidan Kelly scored his first of the post-season to put the Dogs in control.
Danick Gauthier made it a 4-0 affair at 12:34 of the final stanza followed by Mike Thomas getting in on the action at 16:11 to make it a 5-0 final.
“That’s what we were looking for,’’ Dogs head coach Gerard Gallant said to the Telegraph-Journal. “Our team came ready to play tonight and (we) looked a little angry and played (our) best game. We really controlled the game and played the way we can play.’’
Saint John outshot Gatineau 35-17 in the contest.
SAINT JOHN SCRATCHES
Defenseman Jason Seed was once again a healthy scratch.
Forwards Michael Kirkpatrick and Steven Anthony were out of the Saint John lineup again. From today’s Telegraph-Journal:
Meanwhile, Dogs centre Michael Kirkpatrick missed his third straight game of the final with an upper-body injury and his status is day-to-day. Saint John forward Steven Anthony missed his second consecutive contest with a lower-body injury.Kirkpatrick has now missed three straight games and Anthony has missed two.
TAILGATE PARTY
It was a beautiful day in the in the Ottawa area. Via the Olympiques’ Facebook page, a shot of the pre-game tailgate party:
BRING THE NOISE
The Robert Guertin Centre is one of the oldest and loudest rinks in the QMJHL. A sellout crowd of 4,000 was on hand for Game Three of the league final, making for some stunning atmosphere.
SeaDogsTV has a video of the drowned out signing of the Canadian national anthem.
THE PIZZA
Via Mike Carroccetto’s Twitter, the pizza in Gatineau looks quite a bit better than the cardboard they serve at Harbour Station.
FIGHT NIGHT
Good scrap between Alexnadre Beauregard and Mitchell Porowski in the first period.
MR. CLUTCH
Stephen MacAulay netted yet another game winning goal, scoring with less than a second remaining in the first period to put Saint John up 1-0.
The St. Louis Blues prospect now has five goals and four assists in 16 playoff games. He recorded 15 goals and 16 helpers in 58 regular season games.
Along with the overtime winning goal in Game One of the semifinals, he also recorded the series winning goal in the third round. This is also the second time this season that MacAulay has scored the winner in the final second of a period as he scored a clutch goal in a game in Cape Breton on December 18.
The line of MacAulay, Mike Thomas, and Alexandre Beauregard started the game for Saint John rather than the top line of Jonathan Huberdeau, Zack Phillips, and Stanislav Galiev.
“Usually it's the [Jonathan] Huberdeau line because they usually do a good job of starting the game off," said MacAulay to Yahoo! Sports. "After the last game, they just wanted to change things up, We're all big guys, we're a crash-and-bang line, but we have some skill too.”
ROAD WARRIORS
The win keeps Saint John perfect on the road this post-season. The Dogs are 8-0-0-0 away from Harbour Station and have outscored their opposition 39-17.
In the regular season, Saint John didn’t lose a single regulation game on home ice. Ironically, all of their playoff losses have come on home ice.
Also, the Sea Dogs have still not allowed a power play goal against on the road on the post-season.
HUBERDEAU DOMINATES
After a slow start to the series, Jonathan Huberdeau was in beast mode last night.
Huberdeau could have had a hat trick before the third period started if not for the goaltending effort of Maxime Clermont. He finished the night with a goal and six shots – five of them being considered dangerous.
"He's a tough goalie," Huberdeau said of Clermont to Yahoo! Sports. "Last game he stopped me when I tried for the deke and this time I decided to do something different, tried to go top shelf and didn't work. He's a great goalie and I'll just have to try something else."
QUICK HITS
Jonathan Huberdeau led the Sea Dogs with six shots… Nicolas Deslauriers and Jean-Gabriel Pageau each had three shots for the Olympiques… Alexandre Beauregard had three hits for Saint John… a bunch of Gatineau players had three hits… Jacob DeSerres recorded his second shutout of the playoffs… it was the first time in this series that Simon Despres failed to score a goal… Hubert Labrie was a team worst minus-four for Gatineau… former Sea Dog Nicholas Petersen was in house and had a quick interview with Tim Roszell of News 88.9… Rogers Sportsnet junior hockey commentators Peter Loubardias and Sam Cosentino were in town… for pictures of the game, visit the Gatineau Olympiques’ Facebook page… to relive the match, check out the SN Live Blog Replay.
HIGHLIGHTS
Courtesy of RDS:
Reaction en francais (Turk speaks in English):
NEXT GAME
Game Four of the President’s Cup final is Wednesday night at 8:30 pm in Gatineau.
Photo Credits: Facebook, Facebook, Twitter
No comments:
Post a Comment