Season comes to an abrupt end for AAA Lions

The Quebec Midget AAA Hockey League Lac St. Louis Lions’ season came to a sudden and abrupt end last Tuesday night at the Sportium in St. Catherine.

The Dollard des Ormeaux-based squad dropped the deciding game of its best-of-five divisional quarter-final series against the College Charles-Lemoyne Riverains 4-1. The game was tied 1-1 with less than seven minutes left to play in the final frame when defenceman Marc Biega drew a penalty, leading to the go-ahead goal by Raphaël Bussières. The Riverains added a pair of insurance markers by Philippe Lauzon and Peter Sakaris late in the contest to secure the contest and the series. Sakaris, a small yet speedy forward who ended up with four goals during the series, was a familiar sight to anybody who has followed minor hockey in the West Island over the past four or five years. He was part of an extremely strong yet controversial Dollard des Ormeaux/Versant Ouest peewee AA team several years ago that suffered severe penalties from Hockey Quebec for committing several illegalities.

Despite its quick exit, head coach Danny Dupont’s troops, which entered the series as decided underdogs, battled hard throughout. They surprised the Riverains by taking the first game on the road 4-3 before dropping the next two. They came back to take game four 4-2 on Feb. 1 at the Dollard des Ormeaux Civic Centre in a sudden-death affair before coming up short in game five.

Geoffrey Gallagher led the Lions in scoring in the series with three goals and two assists while Alexandre Côté had three goals and one assist.

So now it is back to the drawing board for Dupont and Lions general manager Erasmo Saltarelli. The big question as always will be how many returning players will be featured on next year’s roster, and which graduating bantam AA or midget espoir players will impress the coaching staff during the spring and summer training camps to secure a spot on the 2009-10 squad.