The Drakkar loses the first round

BAIE-COMEAU | The Baie-Comeau Drakkar lost the first round to the Victoriaville Tigres on Friday night when it lost by a score of 4 to 3 on the ice at the Henry-Leonard center.

Hosting visitors to the Bois-Francs for a short two-game series, the Nord-Côtiers got off to a good start and opened the scoring through veteran Nathaël Roy.

The response of the Tigers did not take long, however, and the latter sounded the charge with four unanswered goals to set the tone for the meeting.

The locals struggled to find their rhythm against very intense opponents, who remained in control for much of the game.

Trailing 4-2 after 40 minutes, the Drakkar regained hope when Antoine Rochon reduced the lead to a single goal in the middle of the third period, but the crew ran out of time.

Limited to just five shots on goal in the last third, the players of Jean-François Grégoire, blanked in six power games, were again unable to capitalize on a power-play late in the game.

“Yes, the power play could have been better, but it wasn’t just that that made the difference. Bad decision-making caused many turnarounds and this was very detrimental to the time it took to manage the puck, ”admitted the ship’s pilot.

Even if he recognizes that his young club did not give up, the boss behind the bench believes that there are good lessons to be learned from this match in order to quickly adjust the shot for duel number 2 of this program. double.

“We have seen good things and we have to build on it. We have players with a lot of emotion and it will be important to use it in the right place, ”added the head coach who will hand the net to rookie Ventsislav Shingarov.

In short

Olivier Coulombe, Nicolas Daigle, Mikhail Abramov and Maxime Pellerin scored the victors’ goals against goalkeeper Lucas Fitzpatrick, solid despite the setback … Captain Nathan Légaré managed the third goal of the Drakkar, who will try to take revenge during the next hours.