Status quo.

Whoa! Slightly disconcerting alum-news to start the post:

Canadian Derick Brassard today, Tuesday, left Salzburg for Canada. His departure has baffled EC Red Bull Salzburg, given that the 25-year-old forward personally confirmed his intention to stay with the Red Bulls only last Wednesday and had also been notified of the deadline for finalising the squad for the Erste Bank Eishockey Liga (last Saturday). In the knowledge that his departure from the club after just one game – last Sunday against Linz – has necessitated the first of three possible exchanges, Derick Brassard has turned his back on the club today, despite contractual obligations and reassurances to the contrary. After the player, who is contracted to the Columbus Blue Jackets, cleared his things from the dressing room on Monday morning without warning, the Red Bulls tried in vain to contact him by telephone. The powers that be at the Salzburg club then contacted Derick Brassard personally to let him know that they were unwilling to let the Canadian go. He was told not to do anything hasty that he might later regret, and he was reminded in no uncertain terms of the contractual situation. Unfortunately, Derick Brassard still flew out of Salzburg this morning. The Red Bulls will be notifying the IIHF of the player's breach of contract and will be seeking legal advice. (redbull.com)

What if he just wanted to go home for Christmas?

Anyway. Flipping that alum-bit for a happier one:

Howes bagged two goals in a 4-3 shootout win at Arizona. Both came on the power play. He leads the circuit in goals with 15-10-25 totals in just 16 [now 17] games, and he also leads with eight power-play goals. Tonight's outburst was his fourth multi-goal game and his eighth multi-point night this season. Also, check this out about the guy who was the Kelly Cup MVP for the Aces in 2011 -- his shooting percentage is a ridiculous 25.9 percent. That's 15 goals on just 58 shots. (adn.com)

In regular news, since I've been asleep on the button lately...

For the gazillionth time: "[Dominic Ricard] is even juggling with the idea of the status quo [for the QMJHL trade period]."

Hahahaha. Hahahahahahahahahahahaha. Ha. Haaaaa.

I went into calculation mode last week and came up with the real deal: On average, he has made seven trades per trade period (Christmastime trade period, that is). The one with the least amount of trades (incidentally, also a "status quo" year) was four, and that was the year Drummondville popped up to win the Jake Allen sweepstakes. (The year with the most trades was, unsurprisingly, the revolving door known as 2007-2008. This is just in the Ricard regime, by the way.)

And for the gazillionth time...: Status quo is immediately revoked. Au revoir, Bryce Milson. The 19 year old was traded to the Cape Breton Screaming Eagles in return for a third round pick in 2013. He who started the year as team fitness champion with an excellent preseason has not been able to continue on that pace in the same way (it has to be said he wasn't exactly used consistently, either).

Meanwhile, Duhamel left for Team Canada: And Louis Robitaille picked up his first win as head coach against the Quebec Remparts in a shootout. How about that? Boom.

GOALS	1	2	3	OT	SO	Total
QUEBEC	0	0	2	0	0	2
DRUMMONDVILLE	1	0	1	0	1	3

Heroes: Archambault with two goals and Brouillard the elder with the shootout winner.

...And a different kind of status quo remains: With wins against good teams there are usually blowout losses to expansion teams immediately afterwards.

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

Naturally, NATURALLY, Comtois had two of those goals and finished with a game-high +4.

Scorers for Drummondville: Malouin, Caouette, and Brouillard the elder.

But wait! The return of Domenic Graham:

GOALS	1	2	3	Total
DRUMMONDVILLE	0	1	2	3
BAIE-COMEAU	0	1	1	2

...was apparently a good one. Thirty-five saves kind of good.

Heroes: Brouillard the elder again, Caouette again, and Gabriel Vermette.
Silent heroes: The younger Brouillard has a 5-game point streak happening right now.

Tonight is yet another meeting with Gatineau, who have won their last game against Val-d'Or by the score of 3-1.

Black (and red) Friday

Whoa! Where the hell have I been?

Here, for one. Have some teaser shots from the game (not for stealing purposes, obviously):

The rest can be found over at All Habs.

Two nights previous:

GOALS	1	2	3	Total
DRUMMONDVILLE	1	0	2	3
BLAINVILLE-BOISBRIAND	1	2	3	6

Drummondville: Archambault (2), Auger.
Blainbriand: Clapperton, Martel (2), Sanche, Roy (2).

This game also featured the loss of Domenic Graham to an undisclosed lower-body injury. (This goalie drama is starting to look a little too Montreal Canadiens to me, especially every time someone quotes Duhamel as saying there is no superior. Okay then.)

The night before that, Drummondville seemed to take into account my warning message about Gatineau. (Just kidding, my mom doesn't even read this blog.)

GOALS	1	2	3	Total
GATINEAU	0	2	0	2
DRUMMONDVILLE	2	1	2	5

Sixty percent of the Volts' goals were scored on the power play, but I won't disclose the amount of power plays they actually had, just to make it look better. Boom.

Drummondville: Malouin, Gauthier, Archambault (2), Brouillard the elder.
Gatineau: Burke, Chapman.

And now for tonight:

Rimouski: 13-8-1-3, 30 points, 5th in the league, 84 GF, 86 GA, have a one-game winning streak just like Drummondville, and Peter Trainor and Scott Oke (city) each have over 30 points this year. Meanwhile, Carl Hozjan has a GAA of 2.83 with a .911 SV% as his counterpart Philippe Desrosiers has a 3.34 GAA with a .902 SV%.

Drummondville: 13-11-0-0, 26 points, 9th in the league, 74 GF, 82 GA, have won four of their last five games, Verrier has taken the lead in points with 29 in 24 games (Brouillard the elder is suffering from a concussion), and Guindon's stats are now 3.14 GAA and .874 SV%.

Around the league: So Quebec decided to quit hogging three Euros and traded one...for another Euro.

2012-11-21	Rouyn-Noranda	Québec	Kamaev, Denis (1994-03-06)	Rd_2, 2013 (Chi)
	Québec	Rouyn-Noranda	Kucherov, Nikita (1993-06-17)

But there is a method to their madness. Sometimes.

2012-11-21	Québec	Sherbrooke	Kamaev, Denis (1994-03-06)	Rd_1, EURO 2014
	Sherbrooke	Québec		Rd_5, 2013 Rd_1, EURO 2014

Speaking of Patrick, tonight is already his 500th game as head coach. I wonder if his buddy Dutil made him a cake.

All quiet on the Alumni front: Somebody do something! (Namely, can Hamilton win a game sometime this month?) UPEI faces off against UNB, Concordia is at Nipissing (no, I do not have a potty mouth. Not this time, anyway), Ryerson plays UQTR and Toronto and McGill have a Centraide Charity game planned at McConnell Arena tonight. Scott Howes and the Allen Americans have a rematch against the Arizona Sundogs in the CHL, while the ECHL's Florida and Cincy both have games tonight (for you Landry and Bouvet-Morrissette fans). Sean Couturier is in action against Norfolk, Palat and Hoffman face off, and it's a little harder to verify goalie-starts but Jake Allen should at least be within a hundred foot radius of the net as Peoria take on Milwaukee. No Hamilton until Sunday afternoon.

EDIT: Apparently Derick Brassard has signed in Austria, as per Aaron Portzline. His Columbus Blue Jackets just lost the All-Star Game due to the lockout.

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...

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!

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.

W is a favourite letter in the alphabet.

So the Voltigeurs have kicked off opening weekend with two wins, first on Friday with a 4-3 victory against the Memorial Cup-winning Cataractes and then on Sunday as they beat the newest team in the league, the Sherbrooke Phoenix, 2-1.

Things that are cool in light of these wins:

• Forever annoying #theshawi when they actually have things to celebrate by beating them.
• Olivier Archambault keeps passing to people and some of these plays turn into goals. Including one of his own.
• Newcomer Lukas Balmelli's first goal in the league proved to be the game-winner against Sherbrooke.
• Dexter Weber got his first point in the league against #theshawi.
• Domenic Graham got a night off AND Louis-Philip Guindon fared rather impressively in his place in what was his first taste of real QMJHL action yesterday afternoon. Fellow rookie Daniel Audette was unable to score his first goal because of him.

Things we like a little less:

• One-goal games. But unlike last year, so far the Volts seem to be on the right side of them.
• Nikolas Brouillard losing teeth and being unable to finish said Sherbrooke game.
• The power play is 0-for-12. Guy Boucher is somewhere launching baseballs at people's heads with a hockey stick because of this.

Up next: Rouyn Noranda (home opener!). These guys have split their weekend with a 5-3 loss against the Armada and a 2-1 win against Victoriaville. Jean Sébastien Dea and Sven Andrighetto have combined for nine points in those two games.

The Forever Preseason is Finally Over

The biggest and best headline this post has to offer is the one above.
Drummondville's record: 3-3-0-1 in seven games spread out over five months. That leads to a scathingly precise .500 record. Meh!

However, in those 7 games, the power play had an efficiency of 30% and 29 goals were scored.

Points leaders:
Bryce Milson (6 goals, 4 assists)
Marc-Olivier Brouillard (3 goals, 7 assists)
Olivier Archambault (one goal, 9 assists)
Jordan Murray (2 goals, 7 assists)
Jérôme Verrier (5 goals, 2 assists)

The first regular-season game is this Friday at 7:30 p.m. in #theshawi against none other than the defending Memorial Cup Champions.  The Cataractes have had a surprisingly good preseason, going 5-3-0-0 in their eight matchups (they also scored 29 goals).
 
What of Hrabarenka?: Apparently it's still a case of the wait-and-see with the Belarussian defenseman, who will report to Albany despite the influx of people previously playing in the NHL having been assigned there this weekend. Should he return to Drummondville, Dominic Ricard gets to be the one to decide what happens next.

Sean, we hardly knew ye: Today's most duh-worthy news goes to the fact that Sean Couturier will not be returning to Drummondville. (The fact that it was even presented as a possibility is quite cruel, to be quite honest.)

Howes, what are you doing?: Former Kelly Cup MVP Scott Howes is the latest addition to the Allen Americans (Central Hockey League). Adam Pineault, Chris Doyle, and Bradley Gallant are among the other former QMJHLers on the Allen roster presented on their web site. But Howes, as a result of that stellar 2010-11 season that saw him become playoff MVP, saw some time in the AHL (!) last season under former coach Brent Thompson, scoring eleven goals and as many assists for the Bridgeport Sound Tigers. Being that the AHL is currently more than full, heading back to Bridgeport might not have been a feasible plan. But what's wrong with Alaska? :( /rings cowbell in a corner

Zohorna and Svoboda on the same roster again! Sort of: Speaking of influxes of NHLers, the Czech ones are of a particular interest to yours truly (yet another occasion to use the word duh!) and in seeing where some of them were off to, a discovery was made on HC Kometa Brno's roster this morning:

Source: http://www.hc-kometa.cz/soupiska.asp

Hynek indeed appears to be the other Tomáš' little brother. While it's not 100% the reunion I was hoping for, it did bring tears to my eyes.