RED DEER, AB – As the 2016 MasterCard Memorial Cup geared into day two, the champions from the Western Hockey League and the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League found out how important sticking to a game-plan can be.
The Rouyn-Noranda Huskies (QMJHL) rode a strong 40 minutes to a 5-3 win over the Western Hockey League’s Brandon Wheat Kings at the Enmax Centrium Saturday evening.
The Huskies opened up a 5-1 lead through two periods and held off a third-period charge by the Wheat Kings to cut into the lead only to see the Huskies hold on.
“We did a good job for most of the game,” said high-scoring Huskies forward Timo Meier. “We let down in the third period. It didn’t cost us the game but we’ve definitely got to get better.”
“In the third we got away from our game-plan,” Meier also said. “We stopped working and you can’t do it against a team like that.”
“We played a good first and second period,” said Huskies General Manager/Coach Gilles Bouchard. “We used our speed and played a north-south game. We chipped the puck into (open) space. After that, in the third period, we played the score. We stopped skating and our mindset was not good.”
Meier scored a pair of goals for the Huskies.
Francis Perron assisted on three goals for Rouyn-Noranda. Alexandre Fortin added a pair of assists.
Trailing 1-0, the Huskies scored three times in the final six minutes of the first period to take the lead over a Brandon team that struggled late in the frame.
“When they scored the first goal, for me that had been coming for a few shifts,” said Brandon General Manager/Coach Kelly McCrimmon. “We didn’t respond well enough to get to the intermission.”
“In the second period, we actually had a pretty decent push to start the period,” McCrimmon also said. “We were better, then we took three-straight (penalties). When you talk about the things you can’t do, you can’t do all of those things. If you’re going to have a first period that doesn’t go well, your final 40 minutes have got to be flawless and I didn’t think we did a good job with that part of it.”
Gabriel Fontaine, Philippe Myers and AJ Greer also scored for Rouyn-Noranda.
Reid Duke, Tyler Coulter and John Quenneville completed the Brandon scoring.
“We had a good first few minutes but it’s too bad we couldn’t sustain it,” said Duke. “It was nice to see the push-back in the third.”
“It goes to show that if we play the way we can play, we’re going to be dominating the game, which is what we did in the third,” Duke said. “In a short tournament like this, it’s too bad that the first period hurt us like that.”
Goaltender Chase Marchand stopped 38 shots for the Huskies while Jordan Papirny stopped 24 shots for the Wheat Kings.
Both Meier and Duke spoke of the need to stick to a game-plan in a tournament that sees little familiarity between teams.
“It’s really important that you stick to the game you’ve played all season,” Meier said. “You don’t want to get away from that. Obviously it’s a team you’ve never faced before aside from watching video. It’s really exciting for all the guys.”
“Obviously we want to pre-scout them but it’s the way that we play (that matters),” Duke said. “If we focus on ourselves and just get our structure going early, we should be fine. It was nice to see that we pulled through a little bit there at the end of the game.”
The Huskies return to action on Sunday night against the Red Deer Rebels. Brandon is back in action on Monday night against the London Knights.