The Lac St. Louis Midget Espoir Royals defeated the Basses-Laurentides Conquérants 8-4 Saturday afternoon at Dorval Arena. As it is often the case in many hockey games, the final score doesn’t quite tell the story of the game.
When the two teams retreated to the locker rooms after the second period, this was still a one-goal game as the Royals led 4-3 thanks to goals by William Spinney, Trevor Lorber (2) and Vincent Watt. Shawn St. Amant, Gabriel Paquin and Antoine Kilanowski had replied for the Conquérants.
The Royals really took the measure of the Conquérants in the third period with four goals against only one for the Basses-Laurentides.
“Our goalie just didn’t make the stops. If he would have, we would have won the game. We’re the last place team and we were playing the first-place team so I think we still competed well tonight but the goalie has got to make the stops,” said Conquérants’ head coach Daniel Perron.
Watt started the third-period avalanche with a powerplay goal at 5:11 on a screen shot, his second tally of the game. Kilanowski scored also on the power play for the Conquérants at 8:19 with a low shot that bested goalie Gabriel Ware at his right to make this a one-goal game again but that would be the last straw of hope for the Conquérants.
Watt completed his hat trick with a shot from deep inside the slot at 10:25 to make the score 6-4. Watt was at the origin of his team’s seventh goal when the opposing goaltender gave up a huge rebound on his shot allowing Chandler Shapiro to score at 15:18. Jamie Stepto nailed the coffin shut with a goal of his own with less than three minutes remaining.
Royals’ head coach Jim Webster had seen his team drop a point last week by only tying the then last place team (Lanaudière Pionniers). He wasn’t about to see his team repeat the same mistake against tenth-seed Conquérants in the third period.
“We tied the last place team last week and let a point get away from us to put us in second place. With a score of 4-3 going into the third period, we didn’t want to let another point get away from us in a game we thought we should win. So we had more focus and we got away from the home run pass, the long bomb and we stuck more to our game,” he said.
