Halifax 4 - Baie-Comeau 0

Want to read Puckerings articles when it suits you? Just sign up for our RSS feed!

After a bitter loss to the Cape Breton Screaming Eagles on Friday night, the Halifax Mooseheads stormed back to dismantle one of the QMJHL’s top teams, the Baie-Comeau Drakkar, by a score of 4-0 at the Halifax Metro Centre.
“We wanted to really dig down after we didn’t have our best outcome up in Cape Breton,” said Mooseheads forward Shawn O’Donnell, of the loss that snapped an eight-game winning streak. “We wanted to show the league and Baie-Comeau, because they’re one of the better teams, what we can do.

“The boys really stuck together. Everybody had something to prove out here tonight and it was a good win for us.”

O’Donnell, Ryan Hillier, Guillaume Monast and Andrew White scored for the Mooseheads, who led 2-0 after the first period and 3-0 after the second. Pier-Olivier Pelletier was sharp in the Halifax crease, stopping 21 shots for his first shutout of the season.

“Pelletier’s been great the last little while,” said O’Donnell. “He’s been superior night in and night out and he’s really been carrying this team the last few games.

“We really wanted to get the shutout for P.O. He’s really stepped up his game.”

The Mooseheads also did well to shut down the Drakkar without their captain and No. 1 defenceman Andrew Bodnarchuk, who did not play because of a wrist injury.

“It’s really good for the confidence for the other guys,” said Monast. “When you’re missing a guy like Andrew, who’s probably the best defenceman in the league, it’s not like you can put another guy in his spot and say ‘Take his place.’ So it was a really good team effort and the whole D squad stepped up.”

The game also featured the league’s best offence versus the best defence. But the Mooseheads showed the defensively stingy Drakkar why they have scored more goals than any other team in the league. Halifax’s skaters wore down the Baie-Comeau defence with strong forechecking and consistent scoring pressure from all of their lines.

“I think it was a good system win,” said Monast. “The coach asked us to put the puck deep because he knew they were tired and told us to forecheck them hard. That’s what we did and obviously it gave us success.”
The Mooseheads also had to get by without centre Logan MacMillan for the third period. The third-year centre left the game during the second intermission after experiencing extreme exhaustion. Halifax general manager Marcel Patenaude said MacMillan left with his father for a few days’ rest at home in P.E.I.

“It was a lot of hockey for him and it was time for him maybe to have a little break,” Patenaude said. “The thing we decided, with his parents, it was eight games in a short period of time (11 days) and he felt tired and he didn’t feel very good, so we decided it would be preferable for him to go home and relax and get ready for next weekend.”

The win improves the Mooseheads’ record to 20-4-0-4 and increases their lead in first place overall to four points.

“It was a long road trip and after that we had to play against the team that’s third in their division and (fifth) in the league,” said Monast. “It feels good that we were able to win that one.”

The Mooseheads play their next game on Friday at home against the Quebec Remparts.