LAVAL | The Rocket scores a lot of goals, but allows even more.
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After five games, the Laval team has the best attack in the American Hockey League with 23 goals scored. But it also has the worst defense with 25 goals allowed.
We better understand why the Montreal Canadiens farm club has a record of one win, three losses and one setback in overtime. But Jean-François Houle is not surprised by his men’s start to the season.
“We are pretty much where I thought,” he admitted openly after training on Tuesday. We always want more wins, but we are young in every position. We concede five goals a game and it’s hard to win. We have enough goals to win.”
Strengthen the defense
“We have to strengthen the defense and be tighter,” emphasized Houle.
And that’s a good thing, because after a two-day break, the Rocket players sweated a lot in a training session that lasted more than two hours.
The Canadiens’ development staff, including Francis Bouillon and Paul Byron, were at Place Bell for the occasion.
“It allows you to make a lot of corrections on the ice,” Houle explains. We want the defenders to be able to better control the space they give them.”
“These are things we are not used to. “It takes you out of your comfort zone and that’s a good thing,” agreed defender Nicolas Beaudin. These are practices that are developmentally comfortable.
Surplus numbers
The Rocket’s mission in future games will be to reduce attacks where the opponent takes advantage.
“We give too many overnumbers, we will make sure we put a player higher up in the defensive zone to give less overnumbers,” Houle emphasized. We have to break down the other teams’ offensive plays and be more aggressive.”
“We might have had two more wins if we had handled our games better,” Houle added.
On the bright side, Logan Mailloux scored his first American League goal Saturday in Belleville, but that’s not something that makes him happy.
“It was good to score but we still lost the game. Everyone has to improve, me first, but we’ve only played five games. I was far from perfect, but I think there were some good impressions.”
Lots of losses
Yesterday morning Jean-François Houle learned that he had lost two defenders. Gustav Lindstrom was traded to the Canadiens following David Savard’s injury, while Brady keeper (lower body) is out indefinitely after suffering an injury in the third period at Belleville.
Add to that the names of Emil Heineman (upper body), Jared Davidson (upper body) and Gabriel Bourque (lower body), all of whom are injured.
“We had eight extra players, we still have one left,” said Houle, who witnessed the Rocket re-sign John Parker-Jones from the Trois-Rivières Lions of the ECHL that afternoon.
The Rocket will play their next game Friday night in Rochester against the Americans and visit the Syracuse Crunch on Saturday.