The Road to Atlantis, or at least Atlantic Canada

A look at the weekend that was for the Drummondville Voltigeurs:

The Circus, Part II, went about as well as part I:

GOALS	1	2	3	Total
DRUMMONDVILLE	1	1	0	2
HALIFAX	2	1	3	6

Drummondville: Török scored and later assisted on Archambault's 7th of the year. M-O Brouillard had two helpers.
Halifax: Fuhgeddaboudit. Drouin makes his return to the lineup in this game and winds up with 4 points including two goals (one shorthanded), +3 and first star. Some MacKinnon guy scored two goals as well. One of my favourite names in the league (as @EP31 has had the misfortune of witnessing in person those times they played at the Verdun Auditorium), Konrad Abeltshauser, picked up two assists.

The plus side:

POWER PLAY
DRUMMONDVILLE	2 / 5
HALIFAX	2 / 6

Louis-Philip Guindon still managed 27 saves despite the loss. His counterpart, Zachary Fucale, made 16/18 stops.

Enter Graham! (Remember that guy?):

GOALS	1	2	3	Total
DRUMMONDVILLE	2	1	1	4
CAPE BRETON	1	0	0	1

POWER PLAY
DRUMMONDVILLE	1 / 3
CAPE BRETON	0 / 2

Drummondville: With the exception of M-O Brouillard, it was a J night. Jérôme Verrier! Jérémy Auger! Joey Ratelle! (First goal in the Q for the latter.) And hold on to your chairs, as the most assists category of the night was won by ...Archambault.
Cape Breton: Alexandre Lavoie was the lone goal-scorer for the Eagles.

Graham stopped all but one of 17 shots and Alex Bureau was pretty busy with 39 shots, stopping 35.

Deflate that happy-faced balloon: Just when we thought putting Graham in for the second time in 24 hours against the same team wasn't a crazy idea, Cape Breton said "And now, for a taste of your own medicine!"

GOALS	1	2	3	Total
DRUMMONDVILLE	0	1	0	1
CAPE BRETON	1	1	2	4

Womp womp.

POWER PLAY
DRUMMONDVILLE	0 / 3
CAPE BRETON	0 / 1

Drummondville: Matt Boudens gets his first of the year!
Cape Breton: Carrier, Lavoie, Malone, Woodworth. Former Voltigeur Jonathan Oligny got on the scoresheet as well with an assist (and two delay-of-game penalties), finishing +3 on the night.

Domenic Graham made 17 saves on 20 shots, while Philippe Trudeau made 15 on 16.

Friday, the Huskies are in town:
Rouyn-Noranda: 12-3-0-1, 25 points, second in the league behind the Circus, 78 GF, 53 GA, four-game winning streak, J-S Dea and Sven Andrighetto top the league with 31 points each in 16 games, Robin Gusse has a 3.07 GAA with a .887 SV%.

Drummondville: 8-8-0-0, 16 points, 10th in the league, 44 GF, 53 GA, went 1-2 on their Atlantic roadie, M-O Brouillard leads the team with 16 points in as many games followed by Archambault with 15 points, Guindon is the league's best rookie netminder at 3.10 GAA and .877 SV%. Graham has a .858 SV% and a 3.18 GAA.

Head-to-head: Split so far this season (4-2 loss, 5-4 win) with Török's hat trick the freshest memory between the two teams.

Around the league:

Apparently, Étienne Marcoux is Sugar Crisp's latest poster-boy. This reminds me of the good old Gretzky Wheaties days:



Alum-news: It was a losing weekend for most ex-Volts in the AHL, but Sean Couturier picked up assists on both goals in a losing cause against Rochester on Saturday, as well as second star. Moving back to Friday night, both Frédéric St-Denis and Gabriel Dumont scored en route to a 5-4 overtime loss against those pesky Toronto Marlies, and Jake Allen made 32 saves against the Chicago Wolves as Peoria beat them 4-1.

Olivier Fortier has found a home with the Orlando Solar Bears of the ECHL and scored what is already his third goal of the season as Greenville topped Orlando 6-5 on Sunday. Philippe Lefebvre picked up a goal in a shootout win vs. Reading on Saturday and two assists as Wheeling won 7-3 the night before against those same Royals.

In the CHL, Pier-Olivier Pelletier made 42 saves in a 6-4 win against Wichita on Friday. On the same night, he who now goes by Scotty Howes picked up two goals, both on the power play.

What other HL's am I forgetting? Ah, yes. KHL. Lokomotiv Yaroslavl's Dmitry Kulikov has 3 goals and one assist in 12 games so far this season. And since I'm already in Europe, Tomáš Svoboda has apparently been stopped in his tracks (3G, 5A in 7GP for HC Kometa Brno) with a shoulder injury that will sideline him for another month or so while fellow Czech Tomáš, Zohorna, has nine points, including four goals, in 17 games for HC Pardubice, team of the Hemskys, Krejcis et compagnie.

The weekend that was, and not the circus AGAIN?

Thursday:

GOALS	1	2	3	Total
DRUMMONDVILLE	2	0	1	3
VAL-D'OR	0	1	1	2

Drummondville: Goals by Archambault, Brouillard (the forward) on a penalty shot, and Verrier. Brouillard (the defenseman) finished with two assists.
Val-d'Or: Goals by Zlobin and Mantha. Zlobin finished with a goal and an assist (second star). With his GWG, Verrier was first star for Drummondville.

POWER PLAY
DRUMMONDVILLE	1 / 6
VAL-D'OR	0 / 3

Meh.

Louis-Philip Guindon made 26 of 28 saves while François Tremblay made 24 of 27. Guindon was the game's third star.

Friday:

GOALS	1	2	3	Total
DRUMMONDVILLE	2	2	1	5
ROUYN-NORANDA	2	0	2	4

What?

Drummondville: Hat trick for Torok le Taureau (nickname copyright @Jerome_Berube). Archambault and Caouette with the other goals.
Rouyn-Noranda: Andrighetto, Dea, St-Cyr and Kamaev each had tallies for the home team. Dea added an assist.

POWER PLAY
DRUMMONDVILLE	0/6
ROUYN-NORANDA	1/3

 This makes more sense.

Guindon (that guy again) saved 35 of 39 pucks, third star once more. Torok was obviously first.

Sunday:

GOALS	1	2	3	Total
QUÉBEC	1	1	1	3
DRUMMONDVILLE	0	1	1	2

Aww.
Quebec: Shea, Shaw (who assisted as well), Carrier.
Drummondville: Brouillard (the defenseman) and Verrier.

POWER PLAY
QUÉBEC	1 / 4
DRUMMONDVILLE	2 / 7

 Oh, okay.

Guindon (!) made 11 of 14 saves, and was named first star this time. Wait. What?

Also, it was the Pink in the Rink game highlighting October as Breast Cancer Awareness Month:

I have more photos from this game, and a game report.

Next:

WEDNESDAY NIGHT
DRUMMONDVILLE	7-6-0-0
HALIFAX	12-1-0-0

Not these guys again!

Atlantic road swing upcoming (Halifax, Cape Breton, Cape Breton), which means don't forget (if you're reading this from somewhere in Quebec), the games start an hour earlier than usual.

Riendeau in Stockton: Former Voltigeur Yannick Riendeau signed with Stockton of the ECHL, who also once had a Kelly Cup MVP in their midst but let him go...so that he could become the Kelly Cup MVP. Oops.

Speaking of Scotty: He goes by Scotty now, according to my ECHL app, and has gotten off to a good start in the Central Hockey League. Two goals in his first game, and a shootout goal in his second. Also in the Central, Bloomington split their two games and P-O Pelletier was in net for both, making a combined total of 56 saves.

Jake Allen has quite the memories of Drummondville: Apparently the weirdest thing he ever signed was a pizza box, with the pizza still in it. Maybe it was that instead of the flu that resulted in the infamous ice-sickness incident...

Brouillard makes Canada-Russia squad!

The Q announced its roster for the upcoming matchup between Team QMJHL and Team Russia in the 2012 SUBWAY® Super Series. Look carefully and you might find a familiar name (or you already know who it is, since my title spoiled you);

GOALTENDERS
Brassard, Francois (QUE)
Fucale, Zachary (HAL)
Marcoux, Étienne (BLB)

DEFENSEMEN
Murphy, Matt (VDO)
Racine, Jonathan (MON)
Fournier, Dillon (ROU)
Culkin, Ryan (QUE)
Brouillard, Nikolas (DRU)
Ouellet, Xavier (BLB)
Melindy, James (MON)
Oligny, Jimmy (PEI)

FORWARDS
Mantha, Anthony (VDO)
Dea, Jean-Sébastien (ROU)
Hudon, Charles (CHI)
Huberdeau, Jonathan (SNB)
Henley, Samuel (VDO)
Paquette, Cédric (BLB)
Tesink, Ryan (SNB)
Danault, Phillip (VIC)
MacKinnon, Nathan (HAL)
Beauvillier, Francis (RIM)
Drouin, Jonathan (HAL)
Carrier, William (CAP)
Clapperton, Christopher (BLB)
Andrews, Brent (HAL)

Yes, the younger of the two Brouillards has managed to crack the list. Note that it is significantly far from November 5th, so this has the possibility of changing a ton between now and then. If you're superstitious like me, send vibes or even a crane to lift Brouillard from place to place so that he doesn't step on any cracks in the sidewalk.

As for Drummondville: Another Abitibi weekend ahead. Rouyn is stupidly good lately, going 8-2-0-1 and even ahead of Quebec. Note how many guys they have on the roster up there. There probably should be more. Val-d'Or is slightly less well-off, 4-6-0-0, but no less dangerous. They have three guys up there and not for nothing (other than to show off their future draftees).

Shameless promotion: If you are from or are visiting the Montreal area this weekend, come watch Gabriel Dumont and Frédéric St-Denis with the rest of the Bulldogs as they take on the Marlies, this Saturday, at McLean's Pub (1210 Peel) as part of the first All Habs Hockey Party of the season. Or stay home, whatever.

So nobody ruined the circus.

...But they did try, so there is that. And this happened today:

Buts
1. DRU Bryce Milson, (3) (Guillaume Gauthier, Charles-David Beaudoin), 1:01
1. DRU Marc-Olivier Brouillard, (4) (Jérôme Verrier, Jordan Murray), 11:10 (AN)
1. DRU Olivier Caouette, (1) (Jérémy Auger, Andrew Tessier), 16:26
2. VIC Jean-Francois Leblanc, (2) (Petr Sidlik, Mathieu Ayotte), 5:13 (AN)
2. VIC Philippe Maillet, (3) (Tommy Veilleux, Philippe Halley), 11:31
2. DRU Jordan Murray, (3) , 16:33
2. DRU Jordan Murray, (4) (Bryce Milson), 19:42 (AN)
3. VIC Philippe Maillet, (4) (Carl-Antoine Delisle, Angelo Miceli), 5:39 (AN)
3. VIC Angelo Miceli, (5) (Phillip Danault, Tommy Veilleux), 19:00

5-4 W. So there is that as well.

If you haven't already, check out my pictures from the Halifax game!

Alum-roundup: Tonight the McGill Redmen men's hockey team took on the Carleton Ravens (pictures from this game will eventually surface as well). They won 6-4, and Ryan McKiernan would have had two goals but one was stolen from him by........Jonathan Brunelle. They were first and second star, respectively, and Marc-Olivier Vachon was all up in the assists and faceoff categories. Also J-P Mathieu and Benoit Levesque were there and the latter had a goal, yes, you get the picture, ex-Voltspalooza.

Elsewhere in the CIS, Remi Blanchard (U de Moncton) took on Marc-Antoine Desnoyers (UNB) and the former's team came out the victors this evening. Blanchard himself picked up a pair of assists. Meanwhile, Olivier Donovan scored in a losing cause for UQTR as they fell 6-2 to Ottawa.

Raman Hrabarenka didn't take long to get his first AHL point (assist), just 8 minutes, 18 seconds. Albany lost, though, 2-1. Former Volts' goaltender Jake Allen was unfortunate enough to take part in a 6-2 Peoria loss to Abbotsford. For their part, Adirondack and Sean Couturier had a better night. Couts took home first star honours in a 6-3 win over Portland (1 goal, 1 assist, six shots on goal). The Hamilton Bulldogs snuck out a 4-3 win in a shootout which Gabriel Dumont contributed to with a goal. Fred St-Denis was a +2. Mike Hoffman got an assist on the game-winning goal for Binghamton against Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. Ondrej Palat got an assist as Syracuse beat Hershey, 4-3.

The only ex-Drummondville player on an official ECHL list, Mr. Bouvet-Morrissette, was not on Cincinnati's starting roster this evening. The C(entral)HL is still in exhibition and the Bloomington Blaze counts Pier-Olivier Pelletier in its lineup while the Allen Americans have both Scott Howes and Andrew Randazzo in their ranks. The Denver Cutthroats (!) have one Takuma Kawai as part of theirs.

The LNAH was also full of ex-Volts doing productive (and penalty-productive) things, but I should have a whole post dedicated to that in the near future. Maybe.

Enough information you didn't need? Good!

The Circus

Instead of being pessimistic about Wednesday night's loss against Sherbrooke (that I totally called because teams with no wins tend to reverse that fate against teams I choose to blog about), I have decided to move on.

To the circus.

Yes! The circus: Not the actual circus, just a perpetual one with green-and-red tents even though it's not as close to Christmas as some store-fronts would have you believe (dear God. It's not even Halloween yet. Calm down already). The one with a moose on it as imposing as the stuffed animals in several Canadian souvenir boutiques, except this time they're actually a team to be reckoned with so maybe we should be a little scared. Draw some frown lines on that moose. They're ready!

(How apparent is it that I have not had coffee all day?)

Anyway. Starring ring-leader MacKinnon!

(Stop, hammer time?)
The keeper of the cage, Zachary Fucale:

Normally the lion would be in there but he's injured:

Careful bro, he'll totally rip your head off.

Quit judging my use of Photoshop (my sincere apologies to Jonathan Drouin). I only have an hour, here.

TVA Sports tried to be nice to us by headlining Ringleader and Archambault in their tweet, but when you click on the link, you quickly realize that tonight is not even remotely about Les Voltigeurs de Drummondville, it really is about the circus that has come to town. They will spin circles and amaze their audience and feed the media a ton of lines with their feats of glory!...But maybe, hopefully, somebody will ruin the circus.

Somebody wearing red and black.

For my first game back at the Centre Marcel Dionne in over two years, somebody wearing red and black better ruin the circus.

Okay, but seriously: Maybe I better feed you some numbers instead of my ridiculous analogies.

Halifax: 7-1-0-0, 14 points, second in the league (not sure why, they're dead-on with Quebec), 42 GF, 20 GA, 5-game winning streak, MacKinnon and Drouin each have 15 points in 8 and 7 games respectively, Fucale has a 2.25 GAA with a .901 SV%.

Drummondville: 4-4-0-0, 8 points, 10th in the league, 20 GF, 24 GA, just handed Sherbrooke their first win in franchise history, Archambault has 7 points in 8 games, Graham stands at 3.07 GAA and .867 SV%.

Head-to-head: Drummondville lost all three games against the Moose last season, the worst of which was their last: 6-2 on January 12th in Halifax. The others were by one goal, 4-3 and 2-1 respectively.

Alum-news?: I wish. Nothing of note that I can remember happened since the last post. If I'm wrong, let me know in the comments!

Vacation, shmaycation

A bunch of things decided they would take place the weekend I was off in Far Far Away (no donkeys included, but several cows and kittens. Also no reception).

First, when players become DJs:

Best remix for nightclub by DJ Jods (@OliJods10) feat DJ Narby (@Jonarby15) Official Pre-Game song of : Shawinigan Cataractes QMJHL

I may or may not be playing it at work at times that are not my lunch break such as it is currently.

When DJs become scorers:
SHA Raphaël Maheux, (1) (Frédérick Gaudreau, Dylan Labbé)
DRU Bryce Milson, (1) (Jérôme Verrier, Jordan Murray)
DRU Jérémy Auger, (1) (Jérôme Verrier)
SHA Olivier Jodoin, (1) (Zachary Taylor, Lukas Pozgay)
SHA JC Campagna, (1) (Jonathan Narbonne, Jean-Christophe Houde)
SHA Jonathan Narbonne, (1) (Dylan Labbé, Frédérick Gaudreau)
DRU Olivier Archambault, (3) (Nikolas Brouillard, Jérémie Malouin)

Aaaand with the Volts no longer capable of keeping up the charge they had going in the first, #theshawi wins 4-3, Narbonne with the GWG. News dropped this morning that he has since joined the Moncton Wildcats as part of a trade that was originally thought to alleviate the 20-year old player count on the Memorial Cup champs' roster, at least until it was revealed that Patrick Downe is also 20. So why split up the DJs?

Hang on, this is a Drummondville blog. Moving on...

Scraping out a W in Victo: After that disappointing loss against #theshawi, the Volts decided to take it out on the Tigres. It took until 17:05 of the second period for someone to score, and that someone was Victo's Philippe Hudon. At the tail end of a power play (!) to open the 3rd, Marc-Olivier Brouillard tied the game with help from Olivier Archambault and Jordan Murray. The latter then enlisted the same guys to help him win the game in overtime, the end result of a major penalty on Hudon who had taken out his frustrations on the younger Brouillard behind Drummondville's net and thus permitted a 4 on 3 to begin the overtime period.

Drummondville is now 4-3-0-0 to start the season and take on the winless Sherbrooke Phoenix on Wednesday.

Hrabarenka, so long (for real, now): We knew this already, but it's official now. Raman Hrabarenka/Graborenko/That Guy has moved on to greener pastures in Albany, which officially also opens up a Euro spot...

And then there was Török: Speaking of Sherbrooke, they traded 6'2" right-winger Tomáš Török to the Volts for a sixth round pick in 2014, which alleviates said extra Euro spot and gives the Slovakian a chance to take on his former teammates as soon as tomorrow. The 17 year old recorded 20 points in 9 games with HVK Svolen's Under-18s and four points in 13 games with their Under-20s last season. He had only played in 5 of Sherbrooke's 7 games before being traded, picking up 1 assist.

Howes it going: Scott Howes made a brief appearance at Texas Stars' training camp, and then back to Allen to participate in the Americans' training camp, where it was discovered that not only have they invited his brother Andrew to take part, but also another Andrew...Randazzo. The Ontario bracket of Drummondville seems to be quite aptly represented in the Lone Star State!

Lefebvre with Wheeling: In Bulldogs' camp, the roster that began with 43 players is continuing to thin out, as Hamilton have released one-time Voltigeur Olivier Fortier and sent Philippe Lefebvre down to the ECHL. For their part, Frédéric St-Denis and Gabriel Dumont are expected to be part of the final Bulldogs' roster.

University roundup: The CIS season is already underway, and should you be looking for more local forms of hockey to replace the NHL and can't always get to Drummondville (like me in the last, oh, two years), you can still have an alumni-fix (and take part in some really cool, competitive hockey):

Jean-Philippe Mathieu, Ryan McKiernan, Marc-Olivier Vachon, Jonathan Brunelle, and Benoit Levesque are (at last check) McGill Redmen;
Corey Garland and Olivier Jannard are Concordia Stingers;
Guillaume Nadeau and Olivier Hotte are Patriotes (UQTR);

...and a bunch of teams have yet to play so I cannot appropriately peruse their rosters.

Look, this already happened:
Jonathan Brunelle (Jean-Philippe Mathieu & Marc-Olivier Vachon) !!!

Alumni to return to Drummondville: La Tournée des Joueurs is set to visit Drummondville next Thursday, the 18th of October at 7 p.m. Tickets are going on sale for Volts' season ticket holders this Thursday and Friday from 9-9 before being opened up to the public on Saturday at 10 a.m. The latter sale is also supposedly going to be made available online and by phone, and the tickets (that get snatched up rather quickly) cost $20.

The Abitibi Split (or something that sounds more appetizing)

Wonderful news. It appears Drummondville fixed their power play!

Not at first, though: First they had to lose their home opener to the somewhat surprising (yet irritably so) Huskies, who stormed in from Rouyn-Noranda to score 4 goals to be met with only 2.

That night, the Voltigeurs were not totally shut out with the man-advantage, as both goals were scored on it, but it should be noted that they had a whopping TWELVE opportunities. Rouyn also used special teams for their goals, including a shorty which was the head-desk heard round the 67 train to Toronto where one could find yours truly refreshing the Q app for as long as was legally allowed on the VIA WiFi system.

Sidenote: Apparently I was right to include this Jean-Sébastien Dea character in my All Habs preview. He leads the league with nine goals and four assists in just five games.

On to Val-d'Or: This was a mean one. Olivier Archambault was on the receiving end of a Cédrick Henley hit that resulted in a) a major and misconduct for the latter b) 80% of the game's penalties having to do with both teams not liking each other very much.

It also resulted in power play goals. Guillaume Gauthier got one to tie the game before the end of the first, Archambault showed he was no worse for wear just over a minute later by potting in a goal of his own, Gauthier jumped in again with help from Nikolas Brouillard (who is back from his nasty injury, by the way) and Gabriel Vermette closed it out, again with help from Brouillard and Lukas Balmelli.

Anton Zlobin scored twice for the Foreurs in a losing cause, along with someone called Skyler Spiller, who quite frankly should be added to that Best Hockey Name contest the next time Forecaster or whoever had it last time brings it back up.

Tournée des joueurs: In alum-news, Brasstendresse was reunited last Thursday on Team Montreal as Guillaume Latendresse scored a goal and Derick Brassard probably had at least an assist somewhere (I can't find a boxscore) in a 7-4 win over Team Quebec in the first instalment of La Tournée des Joueurs, the locked-out player initiative featuring a number of NHLers from all over the league. The first game was in Chateauguay and sold out ridiculously fast, so people in St-Hyacinthe and Sherbrooke have probably also snatched up all the available seats for this week's games by now.

I will leave you with this picture as my lunch break comes to an end.

Om nom nom.