Rocket Weekly: Three Points in Cleveland

After basically three weeks at home, Laval was back on the road last week with a pair of stops against a key division rival in Cleveland.  They took care of business in the first game but came up just short in the second.

The Week That Was

Jan. 10: Laval 5, Cleveland 0 – The second period was quite kind to Laval as the Rocket picked up four goals on just ten shots on Daniil Tarasov, a goalie who is basically in the same spot Cayden Primeau was except Tarasov accepted a conditioning assignment.  Speaking of Primeau, he wasn’t tested too often in this one but he kicked aside all 16 shots to pick up the shutout.

Jan. 11: Cleveland 2, Laval 1 (OT) – You know things aren’t going well when you take a too many men penalty on the first line change of the game but that’s what happened to Laval and they paid for it with Joseph LaBate scoring just over a minute later.  Owen Beck got that back in the second and that was all the scoring before overtime.  However, in the extra session, Owen Sillinger beat Connor Hughes for the winner to give the Monsters the extra point.

StatPack

Skaters:

Goalies:

Team Leaders:

Goals: Joshua Roy (14)
Assists: Alex Barre-Boulet (18)
Points: Joshua Roy (27)
+/-: Jared Davidson (+12)
PIMS: Florian Xhekaj (76)
Shots: Joshua Roy (113)

News and Notes

– Joshua Roy and Logan Mailloux were named as Laval’s representatives for the upcoming All-Star Classic.  They play a series of three-on-three tournaments against the other three divisions.

– Florian Xhekaj returned to the lineup after missing three games with a lower-body injury.

– The team didn’t issue an update on the status of Josh Jacobs and Brandon Gignac who are both battling injuries other than saying they didn’t make the trip to Cleveland.

Last Game’s Lines

Roy – Beck – Barre-Boulet
Harvey-Pinard – Dauphin – Mesar
Davidson – Condotta – Simoneau
Arseneau – Xhekaj – Tuch

Trudeau – Mailloux
Hayes – Engstrom
Wotherspoon – Lindstrom

The Week Ahead

Wednesday vs Wilkes-Barre/Scranton – The Penguins don’t have a lot of true prospects on their team, meaning they’re more of a veteran-laden squad this season which unsurprisingly has them close to the top of the Atlantic Division.  One prospect of note they do have is Rutger McGroarty, the former Winnipeg youngster who didn’t want to sign with them.  Instead, he joined Pittsburgh and has spent most of the year in the minors where he’s seventh in team scoring.

Friday/Saturday – vs/at Utica – It’s a true home-and-home back-to-back set against a Comets team that Laval has won all three matchups against so far.  Utica has struggled considerably this season and sits in last in the North by 13 points on sixth-place Belleville.  They have two promising prospects on the back end but one of them (Seamus Casey) has missed the last month.  The other is Simon Nemec (the player who went after Juraj Slafkovsky at the draft) as the Devils elected to have him play big minutes in the minors this year after bolstering their back end over the summer.

Final Thought

As we near the midway mark of the season, I generally start to ponder the fate of some of the pending RFAs coming off their entry-level contracts each summer.  Are they in a spot where they’re likely to be retained or are they safe bets to be kept?  This year, it feels like all three have some questions.

Let’s start with Xavier Simoneau.  He’s the smallest player on the team but plays with a lot of spunk.  However, his production is down a fair bit in the first half of the year; after putting up 37 points in 53 games last season, he has just 14 in 32 outings this year.  On a lot of teams, he’s probably shown enough to be qualified but with the depth of Montreal’s prospect pool, it’s far from a guarantee he’s kept.

Sean Farrell is the other forward.  After a start to the season that could be described as disastrous, he’s on a nice run as of late with six points in his last eight games.  The problem is that brings his season total in terms of output to just eight points in 30 games.  With how he’s being utilized, I have a hard time thinking he’s going to be qualified if this keeps up but there’s enough time to turn things around.  If Montreal opts to make another change-of-scenery type of trade as they did with Jacob Perreault, he’s probably the candidate.

The other is William Trudeau, a player whose output dropped a bit last year and is down a little more this season with just 10 points in 34 games (compared to 27 in 60 in his rookie year).  However, he’s not getting a ton of power play time and has been used in more of a shutdown role which needs to be considered.  Even though the Habs have good left-side depth on the back end, I think he’s trending toward getting a qualifying offer but it’s far from a lock.

Usually by now, we have a reasonable idea of which prospects will stay and which are likely to be let go.  With these three, their fates appear to be still up in the air making their individual performances in the second half a little more important.