A look back at the pre-season

Michael Hawkins/Saint John Sea Dogs

With the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League pre-season officially over, here's a look at some Saint John Sea Dogs stats that may or may not be significant. It is the pre-season, so...

• The Sea Dogs finished exhibition play with a 3-2-1-1 record, which included going 1-1-1-0 at home. The seven games they played was the most in the league.
• Saint John scored a league high 28 goals... but allowed the second most goals with 26 (Bathurst allowed 35). That's similar to last season's splits (Saint John was sixth in GF and allowed the most GA). This is something that has to improve, and hopefully things will straighten out when the games start to actually matter.
• Goaltender Noah Patenaude played the third most minutes of any netminder in the league. He posted strong numbers (2.31 GAA and a .902 SV%) which will hopefully carry over into the regular season. While Creed Jones will likely be labelled Saint John's No. 1 goaltender, Patenaude should see a lot of - if not equal - playing time.
• Alex Drover led Saint John in scoring with eight points. He also had a team high six assists. That's great to see for a guy who has slipped down Saint John's depth chart.
• Charlie DesRoches and Cam MacDonald led the team in goals with four each. MacDonald's four goals placed him a tie for the QMJHL rookie league.
• MacDonald and Peter Reynolds came as advertised. Reynolds had three goals and two assists in seven games while MacDonald had four goals in five games. Again, pre-season numbers often don't  translate into what we'll see in the regular season, but this is a promising sign.
• DesRoches led all QMJHL defensemen in goals with four.
• Riley Bezeau's 14 penalty minutes was the third most in the league.
• Dawson Stairs' penalty shot against the Halifax Mooseheads a couple weeks ago was the only penalty shot awarded in the pre-season.
• Saint John's power play operated at 25%, good for fifth in the league. The team used four forwards quite frequently.
• One of the more concerning stats of the pre-season was Saint John's penalty kill, which was the third worst in the league with a rating of 75.8%. Like many other pre-season stats, let's hope this was just the team trying to figure things out and putting some players in situations they may not find themselves in during the regular season.
• Saint John outscored opponents 12-5 in first periods; were outscored 8-4 in seconds; and then evened things out in thirds at 11-11. Oddly, the Dogs recorded more shots in second periods than any other period.
• The Sea Dogs averaged 36.87 shots per game, which led the league.

The Sea Dogs begin regular season play on Friday night in Bathurst.