Rocket Weekly: A Good Showing in Western Canada

It was a rare Western Canada road trip for Laval last week.  Once again, they continue to scuffle in terms of their performance but they were able to bounce back in the win column, picking up five of a possible six points.

The Week That Was

Jan. 20: Laval 4, Abbotsford 3 – This wasn’t a great game for the Rocket in that they blew a trio of one-goal leads thanks to an ineffective penalty kill (channelling the parent team, as it were).  However, Laval also channelled the Habs in the dying seconds of the third period.  Cole Caufield scored with 15 seconds left on Tuesday to win their game and Florian Xhekaj potted the winner with just 13 seconds remaining in this one.

Jan. 22: Abbotsford 2, Laval 1 (OT) – Nikita Tolopilo was much sharper for the Canucks in this one with Joshua Roy’s power play marker being the only goal for Laval.  Ty Mueller’s power play marker (at least the Rocket killed off four other power plays) tied it up in the second and Laval was pretty stingy defensively from there.  However, Jonathan Lekkerimaki scored on the opening shift of overtime to give Abbotsford the miniseries split.

Jan. 24: Laval 5, Calgary 3 – This time, the penalty killers were the difference in this one.  Not only were the Wranglers held scoreless on five opportunities, Laval’s defencemen scored on two of them with goals from David Reinbacher and William Trudeau.  That got the game tied heading to the third where Adam Engstrom and Jared Davidson both scored in the opening five minutes to give the Rocket the first half of this miniseries.

StatPack

Skaters:

#	Player	GP	G	A	+/-	SOG	PIMS
2	Marc Del Gaizo	3	0	0	+1	3	4
5	Nathan Clurman	3	0	1	+1	5	0
6	Tyler Thorpe	3	0	1	E	0	11
10	Joshua Roy	3	1	0	-3	4	0
15	Sean Farrell	3	2	1	+2	9	0
17	Alex Tuch	3	0	0	+1	0	0
18	Vincent Arseneau	1	0	0	E	1	0
22	Alex Belzile	3	0	2	E	0	4
26	Will Dineen	2	0	0	E	3	5
27	Laurent Dauphin	3	1	3	+3	7	0
42	Lucas Condotta	3	0	2	+3	5	7
44	Josiah Didier	3	0	0	+1	3	0
48	Filip Mesar	3	1	1	+3	4	4
49	Jared Davidson	3	1	1	E	6	0
56	Adam Engstrom	3	1	1	+3	10	4
62	Owen Beck	3	0	2	+2	7	0
63	Florian Xhekaj	3	1	0	+2	4	4
64	David Reinbacher	3	1	1	+2	4	2
84	William Trudeau	3	1	0	+3	5	4

Goalies:

#	Player	Record	GAA	SV%	SO
1	Jacob Fowler	2-0-0	3.00	.905	0
34	Kaapo Kahkonen	0-0-1	1.98	.889	0

Team Leaders:

Goals: Alex Belzile (19)
Assists: Laurent Dauphin (32)
Points: Laurent Dauphin (44)
+/-: Laurent Dauphin (+23)
PIMS: Florian Xhekaj (82)
Shots: Alex Belzile (94)

News and Notes

– Xavier Simoneau missed all three games this week due to an upper-body injury.  He’s listed as out day-to-day.

– So, too, is David Reinbacher.  He suffered an upper-body injury of his own on the weekend against Calgary.  The injury looked pretty bad at first but a day-to-day designation is an encouraging sign.

– Filip Mesar had 18 points in 42 games in his rookie season.  His next game will be #42 on this season and he’s two points behind last year’s pace.

Last Game’s Lines:

Farrell – Dauphin – Belzile
Roy – Beck – Davidson
Condotta – Xhekaj – Mesar
Tuch – Dineen – Thorpe

Engstrom – Reinbacher
Trudeau – Didier
Del Gaizo – Clurman

The Week Ahead

Monday at Calgary – Laval wraps up their two-game set against the Wranglers, a team that has now lost seven straight and sits just four points ahead of Abbotsford, who sits last in the Pacific Division.  While they lost Martin Pospisil (conditioning loan) back to the Flames, they did get one of their top scorers back in Dryden Hunt last week.  Still, this is a game that is definitely gettable for the Rocket.

Friday at Syracuse – Yes, yet another battle of the two top teams in the division (and there’s still three more later in the season).  The Crunch have closed the gap on Laval in recent weeks to the point where depending on how early-week games go, this could be a battle for first place.  Jakob Pelletier is one of the AHL’s top scorers although he’s currently up with Tampa Bay which could be a big break for the Rocket.  Former Hab first-round pick Jarred Tinordi is now taking a regular shift for Syracuse after returning from a long-term injury.

Saturday at Toronto – The Marlies are also right in the mix for top spot in the North Division as they’ve quietly moved up the standings in recent weeks as well.  They also now have their starting goalie back as Dennis Hildeby was sent down last week when Anthony Stolarz returned to the Maple Leafs.  As has been the case for a while now, they’re led by a veteran core; their top rookie is Jacob Quillan but he’s up with the Maple Leafs.  Meanwhile, former Hab Michael Pezzetta is day-to-day with a lower-body injury and hasn’t played in two weeks.

Final Thought

Heading into the season, one of the big questions around Laval was how two of their better sophomore players would fare.  After getting long looks with the Habs at training camp, how would Florian Xhekaj and Owen Beck step up to show management that they’ve improved and are ready to take the next step?  Instead, both players have seen their output drop and while they’ve looked alright with Montreal, neither player is standing out in a way to force their hand.  At least, not like Adam Engstrom is as he looks to lock down a more permanent spot on the back end.

Heading into Monday’s game in Calgary, Beck has all of three goals in 27 games this season.  This, after putting up 15 goals and 44 points in 64 games in his rookie season.  As for Xhekaj, he’s at eight goals in 36 games after notching 24 in 69 contests a year ago.

There is some room for optimism with Beck.  Last season, he had a 12.2 shooting percentage on 1.92 shots per game which is a perfectly normal number.  This year, he’s averaging basically the same number of shots per game (1.96) but his shooting percentage is down to just 5.7%.  For a player with as good of a shot as he has, this feels like one of those things that should turn around at some point.

The numbers aren’t quite so promising for Xhekaj.  After his final OHL season saw him score at a 19.5% rate, he then went and beat that last season by a mile, checking in at 25.3% on 1.37 shots per game.  While this is clearly unsustainable, there are some players who average well beyond the typical shooting percentage.  Paul Byron was a good example with the Habs.  But this year, Xhekaj is down to 14.3% on 1.56 shots per night.  On its own, there’s nothing wrong with that shooting percentage.  Frankly, that’s probably about where it should be.  But there’s no positive regression to the mean coming, so to speak.  Given the role he has (he’s still primarily in the bottom six) and the type of player he is, this is more where he should be and it’s likely that last season was the outlier.  Framed differently, if Xhekaj is producing around where he should be, is he really having a disappointing year?  Or were expectations just too high with his hot hand a year ago?

When Laval is going at its best, their young core is helping give them that extra wave offensively.  There’s some room for optimism that Beck will get going and help on that front but with Xhekaj, expecting a second-half turnaround might be setting yourselves up for disappointment.  He can still be a key player, no doubt, but I’m not expecting a big jump in his output moving forward.