With so much at stake in each and every game at the Memorial Cup, a sluggish start was precisely what the Kelowna Rockets were hoping to avoid.
Instead, the WHL champs were slow out of the gate Friday night in Quebec City en route to a 4-3 loss to the host Remparts in the opening game of the Canadian Hockey League championship.
The Remparts, who opened the scoring at 5:18 of the first period, led from start to finish in front of 9,474 energized fans at Colisee Pepsi to pick up two crucial points in tournament opener
The Rockets, who hadn’t played for nine days since wrapping up the WHL title, had trouble finding their rhythm early on, and exacerbated the situation by taking a rash of penalties.
Kelowna defenceman Josh Morrissey said the combination of the two deficiencies was his team’s undoing.
“I didn’t think we had our legs throughout the entire game,” said Morrissey. “We had spurts where we were good…but again the discipline really killed any momentum that we had.”
The Rockets were handed 44 minutes in penalties, including 10 to Leon Draistial who, along with Quebec’s Marc-Olivier Roy, took misconducts at the end of the second period.
After Nikolas Brouillard staked the Remparts to an early 1-0 lead, Matt Murphy’s point shot squeezed through the pads of Jackson Whistle at 13:22 of the second for a 2-0 lead.
The Rockets answered before the of the second as Cole Linaker set up Nick Merkley for a shorthanded marker, Kelowna’s 10th of the post-season.
Quebec restored its two-goal lead early in the third when Anthony Duclair, on a clean cut, shorthanded breakaway, was poke-checked by Jackson Whistle before Ryan Graves followed up on the rebound to make it 3-1.
The Rockets responded with a power play goal at 12:43 as Gage Quinney redirected Josh Morrissey’s shot past Zach Fucale to pull Kelowna back to within one.
After Adam Erne provided the Remparts with some insurance scoring into the empty net at 18:56, the Rockets—with Whistle on the bench for an extra attacker—drew back to within one when Draisaitl converted Tyson Baillie’s cross-ice pass for a power play goal with 36 seconds remaining in the game.
But it was too little, too late for the Rockets who didn’t begin the 2015 Memorial Cup the way they had planned.
“You’ve got to give them credit, they (Quebec) played extremely hard,” said Rockets head coach Dan Lambert. “Our focus, our execution, our compete wasn’t where it needed to be. You play all year to get here to the Memorial Cup and you need to be better and you need to execute better and compete harder.”
With Rimouski next up on Monday in what will most likely be a must-win situation, Morrissey said it’s important for the Rockets to turn the page.
“We just need to forget about it,” Morrissey said. “It’s a short tournament, we have two days off before we get back at it again, if we dwell on it or anything like that, there’s no point. The turnaround is so fast, and we’re playing a totally new team come Monday. As tough as it is, when we wake up tomorrow, I’m sure the sun’s going to come up, so that’s the approach we have to have.”
