And so it ends.

It's been so long since Game 4's untimely, tragic end that I've forgotten what I came here to say. My first thought is "well, thank goodness that's over."

Perhaps that's harsh. But no less true. The greatest blessing my first-ever favourite team, the Montreal Canadiens, gave me that day was firing Pierre Gauthier. Not because of the obvious. The overtime loss and therefore four-game sweep of the Drummondville Voltigeurs was not Reason Numero Uno anyone made their way to the Quebec Remparts' post-game press conference. That, of course, was Patrick Roy. Hurrah for overblown speculation sweeping very real embarrassment under the rug!

It's also true because, instead of focusing on what could have been, it gives way to the future. The Domenic Grahams et compagnie have valuable experience to add to their resumes and another fresh crop of prospects and acquisitions (because in my experience I have never known Dominic Ricard to miss the boat during or after trade period) will make their way into the fold. They'll all step up to the plate together and try again.

Together. I'm going to draw from the departing André Bouvet-Morrissette's quote: "Les gars doivent retenir que lorsqu’on est unis, tout devient possible."

Together everything is possible. I hope everyone he's left an impression on (read: an entire population and thensome) in his brief two-year passage takes that message to heart and even tattoos it on for next year and beyond.

Speaking of Stilts, he has apparently attracted a couple of NHL clubs such as the Sharks and the Kings (among a class of others, I'm sure). I've got an eye out for ATO/PTOs, and will certainly pass along the news here and/or Twitter if he finds a home.

Bet you didn't know: David Desharnais' first AHL club was the Bridgeport Sound Tigers, who offered him a tryout after Chicoutimi was eliminated six years ago. I think they may regret not signing him to a real deal.

This has not been Photoshopped. He has been able to stand tall before!

Around the league: Saint John (duh), Halifax, Blainville-Boisbriand, Baie-Comeau (eek), Chicoutimi, Rimouski, and #theshawi are the other teams that have moved on. Quebec next takes on the Mooseheads, BLB and Rimouski are facing off, the Mem Cup hosts are up against Chicoutimi and...Baie-Comeau awaits the crushing block. Not to say they don't have momentum, though, which'll throw a wrench in a few predictions.

Dose of mind-f*ckery: Back to that Patrick Roy debacle. TVA Sports spoke to Richard Martel this week, who is looking for his next project. Mix that thought in to the seed of doubt that's been planted surrounding Roy's status...

As much as half of me is shouting all sorts of profanity against the inference that seems hopelessly wrong, the other half is proverbially sitting in the Colisée Pepsi with a jumbo bag of popcorn.


Alum-watch: I can't even write anything mind-blowing here to detract from my obvious sadness that started this post. But for what it's worth, Philippe Lefebvre scored a goal (from Massé!) in a comeback victory by the Bulldogs on Saturday, and Ondrej Palat and Philip-Michael Devos scored in the same game on the same side and were named second and first star respectively, all of which still weirds me out. For his part, Palat has a seven-game point streak happening right now. Oh, and Derick Brassard has gone slightly bonkers pointswise himself (6 in 6 GP) lately and Sean Couturier scored a goal yesterday and added an assist today.

So...

Perhaps the fact that I have rescued and started blasting my old Nevermind CD is enough to represent the last two days.

Never mind, indeed.

"Bright" side: looking terrible is something of a trend in the Q lately. Halifax swept Moncton, Cape Breton is in the midst of wondering why they couldn't have switched places with P.E.I., and in the biggest twist, Victoriaville is down 3-0 in the series to Baie-Comeau. (There goes my "that should be an easy 5" prediction). Bathurst is literally the only team who was able to snag a game despite being the ones down in the series. Let's hope they don't end up being the only ones to do so in the entire first round.

BUT IN OTHER NEWS...

PRINCETON, N.J. – Yannick Riendeau of the Reading Royals is the Sher-Wood Hockey ECHL Player of the Week for March 19-25.

The 23-year-old right wing scored three goals, added five assists and was a +9 in three games last week, helping the Royals go 3-0-0 for the week to move into the eighth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.

Riendeau opened the week with an assist in a 3-2 shootout win against Trenton on Friday and then scored two goals and added two assists as part of a +4 effort in a 7-0 victory at Trenton on Saturday. He ended the week with three points (1g-2a) and another +4 rating in a 5-3 win against the Titans on Sunday.

A native of Boucherville, Quebec, Riendeau has 41 points (12g-29a) in 40 games with the Royals this season. He also has tallied six point (3g-3a) in 18 games with Providence of the American Hockey League.

Under contract to the New York Islanders of the National Hockey League, Riendeau has 89 points (33g-56a) in 100 career games with Reading and has tallied 11 points (4g-7a) in 46 career games AHL games with Providence.

On behalf of Yannick Riendeau, a case of pucks will be donated to a Reading youth hockey organization by Sher-Wood Hockey, the exclusive puck supplier of the ECHL. Since beginning its sponsorship of the award in 2000-01, Sher-Wood Hockey has donated more than 25,000 pucks to youth hockey organizations in ECHL cities.

Should've just made this blog about Volts' alumni, the way this is going: McGill is still off celebrating, Scott Howes had a goal in a 5-4 Bridgeport win, and Dmitry Kulikov was the latest participant in bringing down the Habs (+2, 21:18) after Sean Couturier, also in the "Volts gone too soon" category (1A, 2PIM, 16:55) had his turn on Saturday.

McGill wins first championship in 8937422542 years

Okay, maybe not that many. But they won!

Ben Levesque (!) scored two goals and, in what would turn out to be his last game ever, captain Evan Vossen scored the game-winner in overtime after getting a nice feed from Boucherville's own Alexandre Picard-Hooper, who became McGill's all-time leading scorer on the play. The goal that sent the teams to overtime came shortly after a scare that booked tournament MVP Francis Verreault-Paul with a five-minute major and tossed him out of the game after he crashed into Western University goaltender Josh Unice.

Yes, Josh Unice who technically was a member of those Spitfires. So there is that added bit of sweetness for the three guys who used to be Voltigeurs, three years later, with the win.

(I'm aware I put a lot more weight on this tiny tidbit than they probably do. But after the season that has been this year, any extra reason to celebrate will be jumped on. Like mad.)

Back to business: Game #2 gets underway tonight in the series opposing this year's edition of the Voltigeurs and the Quebec Remparts, again at the Colisée. What to expect this time around?

The non-McGill alum stuff: Yannick Riendeau had eight points this weekend, and has eleven in his last five games. Mike Hoffman scored twice (with six shots on net yesterday alone). Scott Howes scored. Ondrej Palat scored. Gaby Roch's team finished first. If I'm forgetting you, speak up!

Misc.: Wes Goldie also scored, and not just any goal. The ECHL all-time record-breaking goal.

He's an ex-Volt by association (being Howes' teammate and "Dad" last year), so good on him!

Ex-Voltspalooza, aka the CIS University Cup

I'm going to omit talking about a certain game that took place last night except to say ouch. Although after tonight's action I suppose I shouldn't be one to complain.

Other games that happened yesterday and earlier today, however, bring up slightly less painful memories, while remaining relevant:


1. McGill Redmen vs. Aigles Bleus de Moncton

• McGill ex-Volts: Ryan McKiernan, Benoit Levesque, Marc-Olivier Vachon
• Moncton ex-Volts: Pierre-Alexandre Marion (and according to today's boxscore, Remi Blanchard.)
• Usual suspects Francis Verreault-Paul and Alex Picard-Hooper did their thing and McGill won 6-3.

2. UNB Varsity Reds vs. UQTR Patriotes

• UNB ex-Volt: Marc-Antoine Desnoyers (thanks in some part to ex-Volt Jake Allen).
  
• UQTR ex-Volts: Olivier Hotte, Alexandre Demers, Olivier Donovan, Guillaume Nadeau. (Also seen earlier in the season: Etienne Bellavance-Martin and Martin Frechette.)
• Not even close for UQTR. 6-1 UNB final.

Moncton beat Saskatchewan today, 5-1. Marion made 20 saves! UQTR wasn't as lucky in their rebound attempt, losing 3-2 in a tight affair with Western University. Nadeau was named their player of the game in a losing cause.

Tomorrow, Saskatchewan takes on the Redmen at 10:30 a.m. EST. Host team UNB meets Western at 3:30 p.m. EST, and if I'm not mistaken, that game will appear on Sportsnet.

Other alum-stuff: Derick Brassard got three assists tonight for Columbus in a 5-1 win, and Mike Hoffman scored in a 4-3 OT win by Binghamton.

Fun/useless fact: Drummondville and Quebec were the only teams in the entire CHL not playing tonight. See you Monday!

Nanananananananananananananananana playooooooffffs!

They start tonight!

Game 1 : Tonight!, 7:00 p.m., Drummondville @ Québec
Game 2 : Monday, March 26th, 7:00 p.m., Drummondville @ Québec
Game 3 : Tuesday, March 27th, 7:00 p.m., Québec @ Drummondville
Game 4 : Thursday, March 29th, 7:00 p.m., Québec @ Drummondville
Game 5 : Saturday, March 31st, 7:00 p.m., Drummondville @ Québec*
Game 6 : Sunday, April 1st, 7:00 p.m., Québec @ Drummondville*
Game 7 : Tuesday, April 3rd, 7:00 p.m., Drummondville @ Québec*

*if necessary

In news of the depressing variety, the Golden Puck Awards are Voltigeur-less in their entirety, meaning not even a single nominee (though ex-Volts Jonathan Brunelle and Jean-Philippe Mathieu are up for the Marcel Robert, which has to count for something) for the first time that I can actually think of.

(The famous tank-year of 2007-08 won Best Fail and Best Result of Best Fail, if I remember correctly.)

Also, I am left asking myself why exactly the worst power play results in stronger penalty kills. Was it always like this? Habs fans know what I'm talking about (heck, so do Yotes' fans) but this is also reflective of Drummondville, who find themselves with only one team worse than them on the man-advantage and are somehow fourth-most effective league-wide with one LESS guy on the ice.

Anyway.

Around the league: I know I said I wasn't doing predictions, but there's a neat little QMJHL playoff pool over at RDS that made me reconsider. No, I'm not telling you what my answers were (that's cheating! And anyway, you'd also fail). But for the français-challenged, here are the rules:

Before each round, there's the usual pick-your-team-in-each-series-and-how-many-games-it-will-take-them-to-crush-their-opponents challenge. Five points if you get the team, a perfect ten if you get both the team and the amount of games.

Then, pick two forwards, a defenseman, and a goalie to carry you through said round. But, be careful here, because you can't pick the same guys come next round, or for the rest of the playoffs. So you can't really coast through this riding on Hoobadoo's coattails or anything of the like.

Bonus points (10 for each) are awarded to whoever gets the championship team and MVP right. Goals and assists are one point each. Goalies get two points for a win and two extra if it's a shutout. You have until Game 1 starts to get your picks in!

Alum-notes: All I have for you is this:

"I have the choice, either I start crying — which I felt like — or I just look at it as it is ridiculous and you just have to go with it," - Guy Boucher on the growing infirmary otherwise known as the Lightning.

This...can probably be applied to most of this hockey season in general. Sigh.

And it's Quebec.

'Sup Remparts?

I don't know how to approach this series. (Or the prospect of the postseason altogether, come to think of it.) I suppose the fact that Drummondville has a winning record against Quebec (3-1) in comparison to

• 0 wins all season against Victoriaville
• outscored by the Tigres 25-14 in those four games
• generally not being liked by Yanick Jean
  
  

...means we (I?) may have to thank our lucky stars that Rimouski let Victo win 4-0 this afternoon.

As imposing as both teams may seem, aside from a couple of minor hiccups, this month hasn't been a total nightmare for Drumm. Certainly finishing on the winning side of things against the division leaders has to be a plus.

That said, I'm not delving into playoff predictions this year. I don't feel like I've seen enough

action (that is the truth actually, this is the first season in seven that I have not been to a single Q regular season game) and generally I just don't like predictions, even if I wasn't terribly shabby last year (only got three winners wrong in total).

But I read something about mullets on one of the players' Twitter accounts. If that turns out to be the playoff hairdo, I may have to up my amount of vodka intake in this series. Not that it won't be stressful enough.

Update for those who cared to know: Stilts did not end up getting his 40th goal of the year, but is no less awesome. At the very least, may this playoff season send him off excellently.

Around the league: Oh, right. The other teams. Drum roll please!


Saint John faces: Cape Breton.
#TheShawi faces: Rouyn-Noranda.
Blainville-Boisbriand faces: Gatineau.
Victoriaville faces: Baie-Comeau.
Halifax faces: Moncton.
Rimouski faces: Val-D'Or.
Chicoutimi faces: Acadie-Bathurst.

Which you probably already knew before getting here, but just in case you forgot, there you go.

Injury scares seem to have a commonality in that they seem to target anyone eligible for the 2012 NHL Entry Draft. We all heard how Yakupov went down, how Galchenyuk came back only to go back down, and this weekend the bullseye landed on Marty Frk. The playoffs will reveal what shape the three players will be in, but good Lord. Start wrapping all the others in bubble wrap, pronto.

Update on the unfortunate trash can: it is safe from danger (for now) but still recovering from shock.

Alum-notes: Gabriel Dumont scored two goals against Grand Rapids Saturday night, but unfortunately, Grand Rapids scored five. He was still named second star of the game, however. Dany Massé and Olivier Fortier are still out of the lineup with injuries. Meanwhile, Freddy St-Denis has returned to the farm team cavalry after being scratched against the Isles Saturday night.

He may not be our captain anymore but he is no less fab.





Speaking of former captains, it also turns out that we have not seen the last of UQTR and that they and McGill (and UNB!) will all be participating in the CIS Championships like a fantastic 2009-and-beyond reunion. It all starts this Thursday, March 22nd, as Moncton faces McGill at 1:00 p.m. EST and UQTR battles the host-team UNB at 6:00 EST.

The Value of St-Denis

Tomas Kaberle is a baby-daddy as of yesterday. Because there seems to be a fascination about how the Habs seem to randomly overload on defensemen, another call-up was made, this time to Frédéric St-Denis.

(Hey. No complaints here.)


Steady Freddy is an interesting case. He's been around, which is quite a change considering he stayed put in junior. Since his overage year he's made stops in Hamilton, Cincinnati, Houston, invited to whatever team is under Houston (sue me, I forgot one), Trois-Rivières, and now I've managed to get myself lost. Don't trust the order of this, either. Especially since the day he randomly signed a contract in Hamilton after I expected him to go back to the Wild organization was like a BOOM in my head followed by three sprinted laps of my living room. There may have been some damage caused (more in my head than in the living room, fear not).

Basically, he's back to being Steady Freddy and staying put in one place. Except yesterday, he was up with the Canadiens, which drew comments like "why can't Kaberle have babies more often?" ...the thought of which is frightening, but strangely flattering.

His stats are clean and empty across the board, which is his trademark (but remember that time he scored against the Canucks?!) 0 0 0 0 0, and then a shot on goal. The 0 in the +/- column was threatened a few times, but that tends to happen when your new blueline buddy is Campoli. Crisis averted, however. Ottawa Senators 2, Montreal Canadiens 3.

Meanwhile, in Hamilton: St. John's IceCaps 6, Hamilton Bulldogs 0.

Not that blowouts are an alien concept to the Habs' farm club this season. But a + sign on the end of that "useless/overvalued" stat is, especially on D. Bulldogs' captain and fellow savvy defenseman Alex Henry and St-Denis combine for a -4, but the rest of the Hamilton blueliners? -68.

I'm just poking around here (I haven't had fun with math in over a decade), and I'm well aware that my bias is super apparent. But I bet you can ask anybody in a Hamilton jersey how much they missed Freddy yesterday and they will tell you: A LOT.

Alum-notes: Not much today, but the fact that Ben Bishop is in Ottawa is looking like a healthy kickstart for Jake Allen. He won again yesterday, making 38 saves, including 18 in the first period alone. Meanwhile, former teammate Ondrej Palat, who these days can be seen in Norfolk, picked up an assist on Evan Oberg's 6th of the season in a 4-1 win over Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. Couturier's former partner in crime has 20 points in his AHL rookie year.

ETA: Alex Comtois is singing.

Around the league: Benoit Groulx is PISSED.

Stilts is a star

I think I'll start off by saying positive stuff, since I just recapped the Habs who--shockingly--didn't entirely screw up their Western swing last week.

The thing with the Q this year is that only one team gets screwed out of the playoffs. So with that perspective, even the Habs would make it despite not being anywhere close to deserving of it if that system was applied to the NHL (technically they'd also have to disperse a team a la Lewiston, and don't say Phoenix is the obvious choice because I will not hesitate to get violent with you). Well, because I do bring a certain brand of tough love with them, the same can be said for my Volts, but that being said, there is a particular bright spot that doesn't always get enough attention.

Except Jonathan Habashi beat me to it, because he's smart like that. But yes, André Bouvet-Morrisette.

(I can't show you his abnormally happy-looking headshot because I don't have photo rights and I don't want to get in trouble. But if you go to the Journal L'Express' link up above there you can see it.)

I call him Stilts for short because let's face it, his real name is a mouthful. He even shortened his Twitter handle to @47mo because he's probably aware of that fact. "Stilts" comes from the fact that the last game I went to at the CMD (which was all the way back in September of 2010, woe is me) I snuck down to front row and was immediately faced with his legs. Yes. I had to crane my neck to see what name was on the back of his jersey because he is that imposing leg-wise, as if he was on a pair of stilts!

This week, Stilts was named second star of the Q:

The second star is handed out to André Bouvet-Morrissette of the Drummondville Voltigeurs. The right-winger scored 4 goals and added 2 assists for a total of 6 points. Wednesday, in a 7-3 loss against the Quebec Remparts, he scored 2 out of the 3 goals for his team. Friday, in a 3-1 win versus the same team, he scored the third goal of the contest. Saturday, in an impressive 6-1 win versus the Baie-Comeau Drakkar, Bouvet-Morrissette scored a goal and added two assists. He was named the first star of the game.

The goal against the Drakkar was his 39th of the season. Dating back to last year, in which he first debuted with the team as a 19 year old, he has 101 points in 126 games. Not too shabby for a guy who was discovered pretty late.

He has the longest active goal-scoring streak in the league this season with eight. That's almost a franchise record that he won't get to tie or break because the regular season cuts him off by one game. The last forty-goal scorers with Drummondville were both drafted to NHL teams: Gabriel Dumont and Sean Couturier. But they were on teams who were at least more consistent than a bouncing tennis ball in a square room. (If you had to pick anyone whose Q career to be jealous of, I'd probably go with anyone who was there for most of the Sean era. Hey guys, I'm sixteen and probably the tallest guy here with the best playoff-beard capacities so let's win a President's Cup together! And even when we disband, my experience and talent will help keep this team afloat for two more years!)

But Stilts was only there for the tail end of the Sean era. People were skeptical about keeping him on as an overager. People were skeptical about him in general, and he just kept on keeping on, silently racking up points, respect, and leadership skills all while remaining humble. And now, with him as co-captain and in the top-20 scorers league-wide, those aforementioned people probably feel very silly.

The last two teams the Volts face in the regular season are: Shawinigan on Saturday (better get into the St-Patrick's Day spirit for that one, unless there's a chance the Cats haven't learned their lesson from the Rimouski game last week) and Blainville-Boisbriand on Sunday. I would love to be in attendance for either of them, but in all likelihood I won't, so I'll just transmit my energy into hoping for that number 40 for number 47.

Around the league: After winning 9 straight, Quebec was halted in their tracks by none other than these very Voltigeurs, after which they lost 5-0 to Gatineau who by some stroke of luck is still worse than us. Ha ha.

Alum-notes: Jake Allen's had a pretty rough go of this season, but he recorded his first shutout of the season on Sunday against the Abbottsford Heat. He's got top duties with the Rivermen now that Ben Bishop is off stirring the pot in Ottawa. Peoria next plays on Wednesday against Chicago.

I haven't figured out how this works, but despite being traded to the Islanders' organization on trade deadline day, Yannick Riendeau is back with the ECHL's Reading, where he started the season. Its affiliation is shared by Boston and Toronto, last I checked. Anyway, he got an assist in a 2-1 win against Trenton this weekend.

The McGill Redmen, who have a ridiculous amount of Volts' alumni and have somewhat forced me into betraying my alma mater by rooting for them, won the Queen's Cup 4-1 against Western and have put themselves into the CIS National Championships. Ben Levesque got the eventual GWG and former Volts' captain Marc-Olivier Vachon picked up an assist. Last year the Redmen lost to UNB (and Marc-Antoine Desnoyers) in the CIS final.

Meanwhile, Voltigeurs' school #2 UQTR, who was defeated by McGill last week, won bronze over Windsor by the count of 5-3. I can honestly say I don't know what happens to them now but I'm wondering if it means I have to find some way to keep Alexandre Demers' CIS eligibility valid because half the excitement of going to see UQTR these last few years was seeing him light it up again.

Misc.: In the "disconcerting stuff" category: Drummondville's potential playoff opponent as of this second is the Halifax Mooseheads. As a Czech sympathizer you can see my problem with this. Hint: it is vowel-free.

Inauguralness

Bonjour and bienvenue to my new side project, Seven Thousand Volts. You may be familiar with my work at AllHabs.net and TheCheckingLine.com, or you may not. Regardless, this little space will not set out to look anything like either of those two sites, and I figure I should start off by saying that.

In 2009 I co-founded HabItHerWay.ca along with Rookie to a) get her calorie-crunching brand of hilarity on the Internet and b) voice a female side of the Habs, and hockey in general, that far too often gets under-looked or dismissed entirely. Little did I know my little Blogspot creation would give me multiple blogging opportunities, over four-hundred Twitter followers, even dinners with famous Habs' alumni (that I must say I am still full from).

In the midst of all that, I worked for a junior hockey team, finished two degrees in the same year (I still don't even know how) and went on many fulfilling adventures, both in and out of my favourite sport.

In a similar vein, to this day, despite being unemployed and not looking to get myself back into a classroom, I multitask. And for my followers that already know this, my hockey followings are clumped into an amalgamated mass of things that take on new life each day. With that in mind, the under-looked and/or dismissed venues I would like to tackle in this particular sub-division of HabItHerWay are: junior and minor-pro leagues.

Why? I used to be a one-team gal and frowned upon those who did the contrary. (Un)fortunately, after the 2004-05 lockout, I became the contrary. On steroids. Well, blame junior hockey. That is why we are here.

Actually, Guillaume Latendresse is why we are here. I hesitate to point that out for obvious reasons, but it remains true. The mania surrounding him and the eventual outcry surrounding his demotion prompted my mother to speak words she now regrets: "Why don't we go to a game in Drummondville?"

Junior hockey has revealed a number of phenomenons I had no knowledge of before stepping foot into the Centre Marcel Dionne. The age rules, the rotating cycles of powerhouse vs. rebuilders that make for unpredictable seasons from one year to the next, the much-less-famous player's chance of making it big, and the sense of community and family that encircles these (from the upscale modern to the downright embarrassingly retro) arenas.

Despite this season, in which the Voltigeurs are nowhere near the team they have been for the last three years (given the regular cycle of a junior hockey team I should count myself lucky, or even a spoiled brat) I have decided to take this on at the very end of the regular season, stretching into the post-season and beyond as I reminisce woefully of what once was and the hope for the return of past glory looms far off into the distance.

I also tend to be overly dramatic, in case that wasn't made clear.

I'm aware there don't tend to be many Anglo Voltigeurs' and/or QMJHL fans on the internet, which postponed the creation of this blog by about five years. However, on the off-chance they make it here, welcome. And hang on for the ride, because much like my early driving skills, things might get kind of bumpy.

While I don't intend on being too formal around here, things to maybe look forward to:

Weekly assessment: I haven't determined if I'm going to assign letter grades, as most of this season would get a D or lower. This space is likely better off designated for random moments to praise and/or (the likelier) rant about.

Alumni watch: Probably the biggest chunk of my entries would be dedicated to this portion, as those who started off as Voltigeurs have become ECHLers, AHLers, CISers and LNAHers and I tend to get overexcited about a lot of their accomplishments (...you don't say?). Habs' fans might say they're in for a bit of a treat since the Hamilton Bulldogs count five Volts' alumni alone.

Around the league: Here is where I would marvel and/or poke fun at the other Q teams in a jealous haze as they accomplish things my team currently has trouble with, such as holding a three-goal-or-more lead for the duration of a 60-minute hockey game.

Miscellaneous: NHL happenings, some funny YouTube video going viral around the interwebs and general thoughts might go here.

All in all, this is less of a formal forum for thoughts as it is a personal writing experiment, as I am literally making this up on the fly. That is not something I've done in a long while.