Wildcats win Game 7 to advance to QMJHL final

Daniel St Louis/Moncton Wildcats

MONCTON - For a second straight year, the Moncton Wildcats are headed to the Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League final.

Captain Caleb Desnoyers scored and added two assists to lift the Wildcats to a 6-2 victory over the Blainville-Boisbriand Armada in Game 7 of the Gilles-Courteau Trophy semifinals on Tuesday night.

The Wildcats, the top seed entering the post-season, advance to the league final where they'll face the Chicoutimi Sagueneens, the No. 2 seed. The series is expected to start on Friday night at Avenir Centre.

It was far from a perfect performance by the the Wildcats – but it was enough to get the job done. Blainville-Boisbriand opened the scoring but never led again. The visitors were able to carry the play at times but it just wasn't enough to down the 'Cats.

Tommy Bleyl scored a pair of goals while Gavin Cornforth, Alex Mercier and Gabe Smith added singles. Rudy Guimond made 26 saves in the win.

Former Saint John Sea Dogs defenseman Max Vilen was held of the scoresheet but did play some key minutes on Moncton's second defensive pairing.

Ludovik Grenier and Xavier Villeneuve scored for Blainville-Boisbriand. Zach Pelletier, who made a second straight start in place of the injured William Lacelle, made 27 stops in the loss.

The loss ends the seasons for former Sea Dogs forwards Jacob Beaulieu Elliot Dubé. Beaulieu was held off the scoresheet while Dubé had one shot.

The series will certainly be remembered for some time. The four overtime game. The benches emptying after Game 2. The Armada's last second heroics in Game 6 to force a winner-take-all game back in Moncton. The Wildcats likely would have preferred a smoother semifinal series – but what a series it was.

Things certainly don't get any easier for the Wildcats. The Sagueneens finished just one point behind them in the regular season standings and the two split the season series – both winning on the road. Like Moncton, Chicoutimi was undefeated in the playoffs until the semifinals where they needed six games to eliminate the Rouyn-Noranda Huskies.

Moncton will be playing in the Gilles-Courteau Trophy final for a second straight season. For Chicoutimi, this will be their first trip to the league final since 1997.

This was the anticipated championship matchup and has the makings of a classic league final. Now we'll see if it can live up to the hype.

A few other notes...

• In the OHL, the Barrie Colts defeated the regular season champion Brantford Bulldogs in Game 7 of the conference final on Monday. The Colts were down 3-1 in the series and took Game 7, on the road, by a score of 5-0 (with two empty net goals).
• The Kitchener Rangers last won an OHL championship in 2008 (and are still the most recent Memorial Cup host to win their league title). The Colts haven't won a championship since the infamous 2000 team.
• The WHL final has also been locked in. The Prince Albert Raiders eliminated the Medicine Hat Tigers in six games on Sunday, winning the WHL's Eastern Conference. They'll face the top-seeded Everett Silvertips in the league's championship series, which begins Friday in Washington. The series will follow a 2-3-2 format.
• Everett has never won a WHL title while Prince Albert most recently won in 2019.
• The first game of the 2026 Memorial Cup is Friday, May 22 when the OHL champion takes on the host Kelowna Rockets.