Busy stretch begins for Sea Dogs

Michael Hawkins/Saint John Sea Dogs

SAINT JOHN - A busy week-and-a-half begins on Thursday for the Saint John Sea Dogs.

The Sea Dogs will play six games over an 11-day period beginning with Thursday night's home contest against the Rouyn-Noranda Huskies (10-6-0-3). Three of those games will be at TD Station while the other three will be road contests in Quebec.

Here's what Saint John's schedule is looking like over the next six games.

Thursday, Nov. 25 at 7 p.m. vs Rouyn-Noranda

Saturday, Nov. 27 at 7 p.m. vs Baie-Comeau

Tuesday, Nov. 30 at 7 p.m. vs Halifax

Friday, Dec. 3 at 8:30 p.m. at Blainville-Boisbriand

Saturday, Dec. 4 at 7 p.m. at Sherbrooke

Sunday, Dec. 5 at 5 p.m. at Victoriaville

The Sea Dogs have played only two of these teams so far this season. The Sea Dogs blew three third-period leads on Saturday in a 6-5 shootout loss in Rouyn-Noranda. Saint John is 1-0 against the Mooseheads (10-8-0-1) this year.

The Drakkar (5-9-1-3) sit last overall in the league but enter this Maritime road trip on a three-game winning streak. They are, however, 0-6-1-2 on the road this season.

The Armada, who feature former Sea Dogs forward Connor Richard, sit third in the West Division (10-8-0-1).

The biggest test of this stretch will no doubt be the Dec. 4 game in Sherbrooke when the Sea Dogs face Joshua Roy and the Phoenix for the first time. Sherbrooke currently sits first overall in the QMJHL standings (14-4-1-0) and are an impressive 8-1 at home. Roy sits third in league scoring with 32 points, nearly matching his point total from last season.

This busy stretch ends on Dec. 5 when the Sea Dogs visit the reigning the President Cup champion Tigres (8-9-2-1) who, unsurprisingly, sit 15th overall in the league.

The top few teams in the league are slowly starting to separate themselves from the middle of the pack. The Sea Dogs, with own a 9-8-0-3 record, now sit eight points back of the top spot. Making up that much ground isn't impossible - but they've not made things easy on themselves. Help will be on the way after Christmas, but the Dogs need to start consistently earning points against teams they are capable of beating in order to keep pace. Maybe this will be, at long last, the stretch of games where that finally starts to happen.