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| Michael Hawkins/Saint John Sea Dogs |
After blowing several leads throughout the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League pre-season, the bad habit has carried over into the regular season. The problem was on full display in the team's season opener on Friday at the KC Irving Regional Centre, falling 4-3 in overtime to the Acadie-Bathurst Titan after entering the third period with a 3-0 advantage.
Things were looking good for the Sea Dogs until Mathieu Desgagnés got the Titan on the board at 5:16 of the third. Cole Huckins scored a little over four minutes later on a rebound and then Desgagnés netted his second of the game a minute later to even things up.
Riley Kidney scored the overtime winner with 15 seconds remaining in the extra frame.
The Sea Dogs looked decent in this game, but similar to last Friday's pre-season loss to Moncton, just didn't seem to have that extra jump the squad showed at times earlier in exhibition play. Saint John's offense was coming in waves and they dominated puck possession at times in the first few games of the pre-season. That style seems to have slowly slipped away the past few games for whatever reason. Yes, they're facing more structured teams at this point... but still. Something has just looked off.
Saint John was outshot 46-36 in the game, which comes as a surprise given that the Titan are not an offensive powerhouse. Noah Patenaude looked pretty good in net - certainly much better than he did in his season debut a year ago when he allowed eight goals. Patenaude struggled with rebounds a bit, but looked much more comfortable compared to some of his games last season. He made 42 stops in the loss.
Chad Arsenault made 33 stops in the Titan net to collect the win.
Joshua Roy, Kale McCallum and Alex Drover scored for Saint John.
If anything, this loss will hopefully give the Dogs a spark moving into tomorrow's showdown with a much stronger opponent in the Charlottetown Islanders. We saw a bad habit from the pre-season carry over on Friday night, let's hope we don't see bad habits from the past couple seasons tomorrow.
LINEUP
Girouard - Lawrence - Roy
Burns - Reynolds - Drover
Savoie - MacDonald - Bezeau
Leonard - Carruthers - Vander Voet
Poirier - Inniss
DesRoches - Villeneuve
Drapeau - McCallum
Patenaude
Jones
SCRATCHES: Forwards Dawson Stairs and Vladislav Kotkov (not yet arrived) along with defensemen Hunter Gartley, Jan Hampl (not yet arrived) and Benjamin Roode.
CAPTAINS: On Friday afternoon, the Sea Dogs announced that Saint John's trio of core defensemen - Jeremie Poirier, William Villeneuve and Charlie DesRoches - will each wear an 'A' on their jersey this season.
ON THE DIAL: The Sea Dogs returned to the radio dial for the first time since the 2017-18 season on Friday. John Moore, the former Halifax Mooseheads broadcaster who has called quite a few games for the Sea Dogs online broadcast the past couple seasons, had the call on CFBC 930 AM.
DEBUTS: 16-year-olds Leighton Carruthers and Nathan Drapeau both made their QMJHL regular season debuts as did 17-year-olds Peter Reynolds and Cam MacDonald.
SPECIAL TEAMS: Saint John didn't get their first power play until 2:20 of the third period. Saint John went with the four forward, one defenseman top unit that we saw in the pre-season with Charlie DesRoches the lone defender.
D SCORING: Kale McCallum scored. Jeremie Poirier had two assists. Christopher Inniss and Charlie DesRoches recorded assists as well. Saint John defense doing Saint John defense things.
OPENER: Saint John is now 7-6-3 all-time in season openers. This was also the sixth time the Sea Dogs went to overtime or shootout in an opener. Oddly, all three of Saint John's season openers in Bathurst have gone to extra time.
EXTRA TIME: If you include pre-season, this was the fourth straight game that the Sea Dogs went to extra time. Saint John's final three exhibition games featured two shootout contests and one decided in overtime.
NOTES: On the radio broadcast, John Moore reported that Creed Jones will start Saturday's game against Charlottetown, setting up the expected platoon situation with Patenaude... Titan goaltender Chad Arsenault is listed at 5'07" - the same height as Blade Mann-Dixon... Josh Lawrence went a perfect 8/8 in faceoffs in the first period and 18/26 overall... Joshua Roy and Jeremie Poirier each had five shots... the attendance was 1,372.
NEXT GAME: The Sea Dogs host the Charlottetown Islanders tomorrow night at 7 p.m. at TD Station.
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