Olympiques suffer stage fright against Voltigeurs
VOLTIGEURS 6, OLYMPIQUES 4
The Gatineau Olympiques picked a bad time to melt under the television lights.
Maybe it was the pressure of playing on the small screen, but it looked more like the Olympiques weren’t prepared for a feisty Drummondville Voltigeurs squad that played an excellent road game.
Whatever the reason, the Olympiques had one of their weaker games of the Quebec Major Juni0r Hockey League season last night, losing 6- 4 to the Voltigeurs before 3,106 fans at the Robert Guertin Arena.
“ The QMJHL is a league of goalies, and our guys didn’t get it done ( last night),” Olympiques coach Benoît Groulx said. “ We’ve been playing bad lately, making mistakes that we don’t usually make. ( Last night) was an example of that.”
Drummondville ( 32- 26- 1- 6) took a page out of the Gatineau playbook, going 4- for- 8 on the power play, and the Voltigeurs were equally impressive while killing penalties, limiting the Olympiques to one goal in 13 chances.
Even though the Olympiques ( 37- 23- 2- 2) were missing leading scorer Claude Giroux with an undisclosed injury, they still had plenty of offensive talent in the lineup, but only rookie centre Paul Byron picked up the slack last night, scoring his first QMJHL hat trick.
The Voltigeurs ( 32- 26- 1- 6) took advantage of a lack of discipline by the Olympiques in the first period, scoring three power- play goals and building a 4- 0 lead.
Groulx attempted to shake up the Olympiques by replacing starting goaltender Ryan Mior with Tyler Pugh to start the second period, and it seemed to work as Gatineau cut Drummondville’s lead in half with goals by Dave Bertrand- Duclos and Byron 34 seconds apart.
However, Drummondville restored its four- goal lead when Steven Cacciotti and Alexandre Demers scored, prompting Groulx to send Mior back into the net at 15: 54.
Byron scored at 1: 14 and 19: 14 of the third period to make the score a little more respectable for the Olympiques, but it was far too little and far too late.
Drew Paris, Tomas Svoboda, Stephen Valente, Etienne Bellavance scored the other Drummondville goals.
Gatineau native Derick Brassard collected three assists, giving the first- round draft pick of the NHL’s Columbus Blue Jackets 17 points in nine games since returning to the lineup. He had missed the first 56 games because of a shoulder injury he received in a preseason contest.
The Olympiques travel to Val- d’Or on Wednesday before returning home to face the Foreurs on Friday at 7: 30 p. m. They’re at home against Rouyn- Noranda on Saturday.