The Quebec Remparts focused on their game structure and won a trench battle 2-1 against the Shawinigan Cataractes on Friday night.
After a rather quiet and uneventful first third, it was the Red Devils who scored the first goal in the second third after just over five minutes of play. Captain Kassim Gaudet had just escaped in front of the visitors’ goalkeeper Rémi Delafontaine.
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Then, a few minutes later, the locals hoped they had taken a 2-0 lead thanks to a clever pass from Vsevolod Komarov to Nathan Plouffe, who just had to direct the puck into the net. However, after viewing the video recording, the officials determined that there had been an offside position when entering the field.
Éric Veilleux’s men were undaunted by this disallowed goal and Zachary Marquis-Laflamme finally doubled his side’s lead moments later. In the sequence, Delafontaine thought he had grabbed the puck, but instead he left his glove before he had full control and then slowly slid behind the goal line.
At the end of the period, the Cataractes used a numerical advantage to reduce the deficit to 2-1. Forgotten in the slot, Lou-Félix Denis fired a precise shot that beat Quentin Miller on the glove side.
No panic
After the game, Veilleux was pleased to see that his charges had focused on the structure of the game “from start to finish.”
“We played without panicking. No matter what happened, it seemed like the players knew and believed we were right. Until the end [les Cataractes] We played six against five, blocked shots and positioned ourselves well,” he noted.
“The identity of this team is starting to assert itself. “We had a lot of new players at the start of the season, it’s easy for a player to want to do more to impress the coach,” he added, when journalists pointed out that the team had also been more disciplined, as usual.
In the away camp, coach Daniel Renaud praised his team’s “honest commitment”.
“Overall, you will never play a perfect game. We created chances to score, but we weren’t necessarily opportunistic. We are disappointed with the result but okay with the performance,” he said.
Fast
– With his 30 saves, Quentin Miller earned the first star of the game
– The Remparts players presented the puck of the game to their assistant general manager Nicole Bouchard, who celebrated her birthday on Friday
– Rapper Koriass ended the evening with a performance in the lobby of the Videotron Center
– 8688 spectators attended the game. This is the second best crowd in Quebec so far this season