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| Michael Hawkins/Saint John Sea Dogs |
The Sea Dogs dropped their third straight game on Saturday at TD Station, falling 7-3 to the Cape Breton Eagles. They've been outscored 23-9 during this losing skid.
The loss drops the Sea Dogs to 10-13-1-0 on the year. They are three games below .500 for the first time this season and currently sit 17th overall – outside of the Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League playoff picture.
If that seems like a lot of negatives, well, there aren't a whole lot of positives right now. Saturday's game continued the same trend: the Sea Dogs are struggling at both ends of the ice. They're making a lot of defensive mistakes and they haven't been able to get much of anything going offensively for any significant amount of time.
It seemed like just a few weeks ago this year's team was moving in the right direction. This stretch has been a major bump in the road – and they don't have much time to work on improvements. They play their third game in three days in less than 24 hours.
The Sea Dogs got off to a rough start in the first period on Saturday, allowing Cape Breton to score on their first shot. But Saint John settled in and took a 1-1 tie into intermission.
The wheels fell off in the second period with Cape Breton grabbing a 5-2 lead and outshooting Saint John 17-8. It was an ugly and disappointing showing given that the Sea Dogs were very much in this game entering the period.
Despite outshooting the Eagles 10-6 in the third, the Sea Dogs were never able to get back into the game.
Romain Litalien led the way for the Eagles with a hat trick and two assists. Noah Jettelson, Aidan McCullough, Reece Peitzsche and Adam Klaus also scored for Cape Breton. Lewis Gendron posted four assists.
The Eagles entered the game averaging 2.26 goals per game, the second fewest in the QMJHL.
Felix Hamel made 21 stops in the win.
Alexander Donovan, Elliot Dubé and Oskar Drabczynski scored for Saint John.
Justin Robinson made 26 stops in the loss.
LINEUP
Gendron - Murnieks - Rozzi
Fullerton - Joseph - Morin
Donovan - Groulx - Héroux
Beveridge - Dubé - Beaulieu
Vilen - Baldwin
Croteau - Duhamel
Zubek - Drabczynski
Robinson
Courchesne
SCRATCHES: The Sea Dogs were without forwards William Yared (injured or sick), Matthew Krayer (healthy) and Alexis Gauthier (healthy) along with defensemen Cameron Chartrand (injured or sick) and Julien Wasmer (healthy).
NOTES: The Sea Dogs made a few notable lineup changes. Forward William Yared and defenseman Cameron Chartrand, who made their returns to the lineup on Friday, made their way back to the injured or sick list. Overage defenseman Julien Wasmer, who had a rough night on Friday, was a healthy scratch... rookie forward Nolann Héroux, who was recalled this week, was in the lineup. He was a -2 with two shots... Eagles defenseman Tomas Lavoie played his 200th career QMJHL game... Cape Breton scored on their first shot of the game... great fight between Jacob Beaulieu and Will Murphy in the first period. Both got game misconducts, so both teams played a man short the rest of the night... the Sea Dogs didn't record a shot in the second period until 7:33 in... Everett Baldwin has assists in four straight games... Oskar Drabczynski's late third period goal was his first in the QMJHL... Egan Beveridge had four shots... Baldwin and Olivier Groulx were each a -4... Alexander Donovan had six hits... the Eagles went 1/3 on the power play while the Sea Dogs went 0/1... it was a weekend of small crowds at TD Station. Attendance for this game was 2,356.
HIGHLIGHTS
NEXT GAME: The Sea Dogs and Eagles meet again tomorrow afternoon at 3 p.m. at Fredericton's Aitken Centre.
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