Wednesday for the Laval Rocket means a flight back home from Charlotte. Thursday will be break-up day at Place Bell, and that will be that.
The AHL’s regular-season champion, a team with a league-best 48 wins and 101 points, had then carried that success into the Calder Cup Playoffs. After a first-round bye, they took out the Cleveland Monsters and Rochester Americans to play their way through to the Eastern Conference Finals.
Then they ran into the Charlotte Checkers, a team that for now, at least, is a better version of the Rocket than the Rocket are themselves. Faster to pucks, stronger on pucks, more physical, something that the Rocket had done to opponents all season, now it was the Checkers who quickly controlled Laval.
There is college and junior hockey. There is regular-season pro hockey. There are the Calder Cup Playoffs, the finishing stage for many players before they head off to full-time NHL jobs. And then there is reaching the AHL’s final four, where the intensity and demands test players even further. Win or lose, though, Laval’s young prospects went through a significant growth process this postseason.
“I’d say the biggest part is just every single day like just coming to the rink and knowing that you have more to give and you know something to learn,” said rookie goaltender Jacob Fowler.
It got ugly quickly. The Checkers visited Place Bell for Game 1 last Wednesday night and hammered the Rocket, 5-1. A 5-2 loss followed in Game 2. In a span of 27 hours, the Rocket had gone from a Calder Cup favorite, maybe the favorite for many, to a team that faced the task of having to win four of its next five games.
That never happened. It got worse, in fact, once the teams reconvened at Bojangles Coliseum this past Sunday afternoon. Charlotte chased Rocket goaltender Cayden Primeau for the second consecutive game on the way to another 5-1 blowout. The Rocket had hung tight in the first period, before three Checkers goals to open the second period turned that game into another rout. Primeau, set to become a free agent this summer, never saw the Laval net again as Fowler took over.
Tuesday’s Game 4, Laval’s best outing of the series, brought its own type of pain. With Fowler starting, the night started well. A pair of goals had put the Rocket in control. But just 1:40 after taking the lead, Laval saw the Checkers start to undo that advantage. Then came another shorthanded goal – yet another one, the third allowed by Laval this series – that tied the game. In a span of 6:15, the Rocket had seen their 2-0 lead vanish.
They held in there, though, at least until Jesse Puljujärvi delivered the game-winner with 2:04 to go in regulation.
In a span of six days, it was over.
So what happened? Montreal Canadiens management will have plenty to sort out.
Some of the explanations, at least the partial ones, are obvious. Tyler Wotherspoon, who held a young blue line together all season, missed the final six games of Laval’s postseason. Wotherspoon’s absence became immediately obvious, the composure and steadiness that he provided a young group now considerably reduced in his absence. Next, William Trudeau went down and missed the entire Eastern Conference Finals as well.
By the end, Logan Mailloux had been hobbled. Another defenseman Gustav Lindström, took a hit from Charlotte’s Riley Bezeau in the second period Tuesday that drew a match penalty. He never returned, either. Had the Rocket managed to get through to Game 5 or further, they could have been facing an even more thinned-out blue line. Top forward Laurent Dauphin missed the final two games of the series. Surely more injury updates will follow before the players disperse for the offseason.
Another one is, quite simply, youth. Consistency for younger players can be elusive, and that can happen at the worst possible time. This is a club that had missed the Calder Cup Playoffs altogether last season. That inexperience quickly revealed itself against a tested opponent like Charlotte.
Moreover, Rochester put the Rocket through a hard-fought North Division Finals. While Charlotte swept the back-to-back defending Calder Cup champion Hershey Bears in a rather clinical, drama-free Atlantic Division Finals, the Amerks pulled the Rocket into a fight that went the distance. From there, the Rocket barely had time to process that series win before they had the Checkers showing up in their building three nights later.
Some players surely got a reality check this series. After a 24-goal rookie season, forward Florian Xhekaj recorded just one goal in the Calder Cup Playoffs. Mailloux had his share of defensive misadventures. If those players and others are not ready for the deeper portions of the Calder Cup Playoffs, then it stands to reason that the NHL may be a little further than they and Canadiens management had hoped.
Some of the veterans did not deliver offensively, either. Dauphin was limited to a game-and-change by injury. Alex Barré-Boulet managed just one assist in the series, and it came in Game 4. Rafaël Harvey-Pinard, someone who had 14 goals in 34 games with the Canadiens just two years ago, posted just three assists this postseason and went without a point against Charlotte. Laval had a top-heavy line-up with six players hitting 20 goals or more in the regular season. But when those players’ production started to wither in the postseason, there was not enough behind them to compensate.
The Laval penalty kill excelled, holding Charlotte to just one goal on 15 power-play chances. Laval’s power play had its moments, but it finished 2-for-15 in the series. Shorthanded goals burned Laval.
And there was the goaltending. For the regular season’s second half, the Rocket had gone with an all-veteran goaltending tandem of Primeau and Connor Hughes. It excelled, and the team finished with the fewest goals-against in the AHL. Late in the year, Fowler came to the club as a top prospect out of Boston College. But with Hughes injured, the rookie could slot in behind Primeau, who had won 21 of his 26 regular-season appearances with the Rocket.
Then it all changed with the Canadiens in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Sam Montembeault’s injury necessitated Primeau’s recall to the NHL club. Even with the first-round bye, Primeau did not return in time for Laval’s match-up with Cleveland. So head coach Pascal Vincent went with Fowler, who excelled early and shut out the Monsters in Game 2. After Montreal’s elimination, Primeau returned.
Primeau took the Game 3 start before Fowler returned to close out Cleveland in Game 4. To open the Rochester series, Primeau took the start before Fowler allowed four goals in a Game 2 loss. Primeau came back for Game 3 against Rochester followed by another Fowler start in Game 4. But the rookie allowed four goals on 14 shots, Primeau took over, started Game 5, and shut out Rochester. He started the first three games of the Charlotte series and was pulled in Games 2 and 3.
Of the final four teams in the Calder Cup Playoffs, only Laval had gone through so much goaltending change. Kaapo Kähkönen has been Charlotte’s one and only goaltender this postseason. Artūrs Šilovs has dominated the net for the Abbotsford Canucks. After a change midway through the Central Division Finals for the Texas Stars, Remi Poirier firmly has their starting job.
Did Laval’s back-and-forth goaltending assignments serve as a cause of the team’s problems? Was it a symptom of larger issues? Some combination of both. No matter the reason, the Rocket went from a defensively dominant team in the regular season to one that allowed three goals per game in the postseason, a number inflated by the 18 tallies that Charlotte tagged the Rocket with in just four games.
Still, there is plenty for the Montreal organization to take away from this experience, as sour as its ending turned out to be. Fowler, who is positioned to take Laval’s number-one job next season, looked capable in his first foray into the pro game. Owen Beck, selected for the AHL All-Star Classic as a rookie, produced a solid season. Xhekaj had those 24 goals, more than impressive for a rookie fourth-round pick. Jared Davidson also churned out 24 goals in his second pro season. Sean Farrell showed growth. On the back end, David Reinbacher returned from knee surgery late in the season and quickly fit in well. Adam Engström had a very solid first season in the AHL. Oliver Kapanen gained additional playoff experience with Laval, too.
With the Canadiens ahead of schedule on their rebuilding effort, and a stable of Laval prospects who are now playoff-tested, plenty of reason for optimism exists.
A lot more work remains to be done, as this series laid out in brutal fashion for the Rocket. Once the sting from this series subsides, they can look back on this season as a significant building block. Then it will be time to get down to work so that something like this past week does not happen again.
How To Watch The AHL On FloHockey
The AHL is streaming on FloHockey and the FloSports app. Live games, replays, highlights and breaking news also will be available on both platforms. Sign up today to watch every single game of the Calder Cup Playoffs live and on demand.
NHL Prospect Coverage On FloHockey
The best, and most complete, coverage of the NHL minor league hockey and NHL Draft is found on FloHockey. Don’t miss the latest new prospect guides, rankings and more from Chris Peters and the FloHockey staff.
Watch the AHL, ECHL, USHL, And More On FloHockey
FloHockey is the streaming home to some of the best hockey leagues in North America, including the ECHL and more. Check out the broadcast schedule to watch more hockey.
