QMJHL’s semifinal preview: Rested versus restless in Q’s third round

An age-old hockey question will be asked again this playoff year: would you rather come into a series winning late and carrying momentum? Or would you rather be well-rested and ready?

Both QMJHL semi-final series feature teams that will attempt to answer these questions.

All the favourites from the previous series advanced to the semi-finals in the QMJHL, but two teams took a heck of a battle to get here.

The Val-d’Or Foreurs overcame a 3-0 series deficit over the Baie-Comeau Drakkar to defeat them in seven games in overtime. The Moncton Wildcats overcame a 2-0 series deficit to dispatch the Halifax Mooseheads in seven.

The Rimouski Oceanic and the Quebec Remparts both have extended breaks coming into the next series, so both matchups feature a well-rested team. The long-standing battle of rest versus momentum carries on.

The 2015 Memorial Cup hosts are still alive, handling the young upstart Charlottetown Islanders in a four game sweep after having trouble with the Cape Breton Screaming Eagles in the first round.

The Rimouski Oceanic, the league’s top team in the regular season, persevered through some early struggles to overtake the Cinderella Gatineau Olympiques in five games.

Two of the four teams left are no surprise. Quebec built up as the host of junior hockey’s biggest club tournament, and Rimouski has been building up for this moment for the past three seasons. Val-d’Or is still living in the glow of their championship season from a year ago, and Moncton is a team with all moving parts working at an elite level; a team that is better than the sum of their parts on paper.

The Wildcats and Remparts start their series Thursday, while the Oceanic and Foreurs due battle starting Friday. Both series are a 2-2-1-1-1 format, as the league forces that format no matter the travel in the final two rounds.

(2) Moncton Wildcats (46-19-0-3, 95 points) vs. (4) Québec Remparts (40-25-1-2, 83 points)

Season series: Moncton 2-0. Final Dynamic Dozen rankings: Wildcats 13th, Remparts 15th. Prediction: Remparts in 6.

Series in a sentence: The Wildcats have home ice, but will not outlast a slightly deeper Remparts squad.

Why the Wildcats should win: The Wildcats are coming into the series on a high, having doubled the Halifax Mooseheads 6-3 on Tuesday to defeat the Mooseheads in seven. The Remparts will have sat for a week going into game 1 Thursday at the Moncton Coliseum.

The Wildcats have been a team that goes as stars Ivan Barbashev and Conor Garland take them, and they took them to new heights in the series against Halifax. Barbashev had 18 points in the series, and Garland had 17 of his own. Neither Chicoutimi or Halifax had the manpower or talent to curb the offensive games of the pair. Quebec will have to rein those two in if they want to have any success in the series.

Home ice advantage means last change and it means that the Wildcats only need to play three games at the Colisée Pepsi, an arena that can eat opposing teams alive, especially at playoff time with its ghosts of Remparts and Nordiques past.

Only once has the crowd reached over ten thousand so far in the post-season, but it’s cramped and loud and hostile come playoff time. Moncton will be happy to only play up to three games there, and can win out at home if need be. The Wildcats also won a spirited 3-2 game in January, where netminder Alex Dubeau stopped 41 shots and played one of his best games of the season.

Having said that, the Wildcats have been the league’s road warriors all playoffs long, with a record of 6-1 in “road” games, including the home game played in Fredericton. They are 2-3 at home.

Dubeau is coming into the series with a great performance in the seventh game after blaming himself for Moncton’s game 6 loss in Halifax. His numbers are okay, but he can get on a streak at times. His game 7 could lead to a streak if he carries the momentum, and he is a confident goalie.

Quebec has had to face a lot of drama and internal turmoil that has bubbled over in recent months, and it could start again with a bad start to the series. If the Wildcats can keep their foot on the gas, they could unravel this Remparts team.

Why the Remparts should win: With all the talk of Garland and Barbashev from Moncton, the Remparts might be the deeper team offensively, with Adam Erne, Dmytro Timashov, Jérome Verrier, Kurt Etchegary and blueliner Nikolas Brouillard all at a point-a-game or better. Moncton only has the pair, defenceman Jacob Sweeney and Stephen Johnson at a point-a-game, and Johnson missed two games under suspension in the Halifax series.

Zachary Fucale has settled down and looked every bit the part of an elite starting goalie in the Charlottetown series after Callum Booth started the Cape Breton series. Fucale’s numbers are better than his counterpart Dubeau’s, and he certainly has the pedigree with a Memorial Cup title and two WJC tournaments, including a gold medal, to his credit.

The Remparts also feature the biggest X-factor in the whole series: forward Anthony Duclair. He has been unimpressive so far in the playoffs with just six points in 11 games, but if he gets it going, he can take control of the series. There’s good reason why many around the QMJHL picked Duclair as their pick to win the scoring title at the start of the season, and he spent half of the season with the New York Rangers in the NHL before returning to the Q. He has talent in spades and could be the best overall player in the series, if he wants to be.

The Remparts may have lost the season series to the Wildcats, but their team wasn’t rolling the way they are now. Their two losses came in the middle of a four game road swing at the start of a three-in-four with two new players (Verrier and Vladimir Tkachev) making their debuts, and Fucale’s second start in a Remparts uniform. They are locked in now.

Quebec is the 2015 Memorial Cup host team and they wouldn’t be a good host if they didn’t load up for the tournament. Some might argue they didn’t make enough moves to get better, but they certainly improved during the trading period, getting Verrier, Tkachev, Fucale and blueliners Matt Murphy and Brian Lovell. Adding two top line scorers, maybe the best netminder in the league and two depth defenders is a great trading period, no matter the cost.

The Remparts built for games in April and May, and the Wildcats don’t match up to their experience. Prior to this season, Moncton hadn’t made it out of the first round since 2010.

(1) Rimouski Oceanic (47-16-3-2, 99 points) vs. (6) Val-d’Or Foreurs (35-25-3-5, 78 points)

Season series: Rimouski 4-0. Final Dynamic Dozen rankings: Oceanic 3rd, Foreurs 16th. Prediction: Oceanic in 6.

Series in a sentence: Rimouski is simply too deep and too skilled for Val-d’Or to handle.

Why the Oceanic should win: Rimouski is a stacked, deep team. Behind leading playoff scorer Christopher Clapperton, acquired in the off-season from Blainville-Boisbriand, the next 13 players in scoring for the Oceanic are home-grown players. It’s a testament to their developmental system that they only needed to acquire two impact players, Clapperton and blueliner Charles-David Beaudoin, to make a big run at the championship.

This is a team that has played together as a unit all year, with no major adds other than Beaudoin, and that was in November. They are as connected as ever, and are running like a well-oiled machine, having lost only one game so far in the playoffs in defeating the Victoriaville Tigres and the Gatineau Olympiques.

Etienne Montpetit has been by far the better of the two netminders the Foreurs send to guard the cage, with an 8-3 record so far, including four wins in five games in the Rouyn-Noranda series. But his personal statistics are unimpressive, and the Foreurs have given up 48 goals in their 13 games so far. If the Oceanic can defend the Foreurs offense, the series shouldn’t be an issue, as the Foreurs have been blown out twice so far in the playoffs, by scores of 8-3 and 9-1. Rimouski has scored 37 goals in nine games so far this season, led by Clapperton’s nine, and Michael Joly’s six.

On the other end, the Oceanic have picked a goalie, and he was named the CHL’s top for the week ending April 19. Louis-Philip Guindon, acquired at the mid-season trading period from the Drummondville Voltigeurs, has been perfect so far in the post-season, with a 5-0 record and a sparkling 1.02 GAA and a .952 save percentage. Should he falter, the Oceanic have by far the best backup in the league, former starter Philippe Desrosiers, who has gone 3-1 in the playoffs as well.

That’s if you can get to the net. Rimouski’s defensive unit is the best in the league on paper, led by the top pair Beaudoin and Samuel Morin. They are all six feet or above, save for Eduard Nasybullin, and they are all defensively responsible.

Rimouski took three years to build for this season, and they took every step carefully under the direction of head coach and GM Serge Beausoleil. They planned for exactly this moment, and they are playing a very streaky team.

Why the Foreurs should win: Val-d’Or is coming into the series on the highest of highs, winning four straight, including two in overtime, to send the Baie-Comeau Drakkar packing. They got the game 7 winner in extra fun with Alexis Pépin sending home a Pierre-Maxime Poudrier pass to win the series and complete the comeback. The Foreurs are flying, much like the streak they entered the playoffs with. Rimouski has been sitting idle for almost a week.

Mario Durocher is a very experienced coach, perhaps the most experienced active coach in the league, having coached with six teams, and head coach with five. He’s won championships with the Tigres in 2002 and the Foreurs last season. He’s been around the block enough to understand playoff pressure and how to handle it. He’s made the playoffs in eight of his nine seasons as a head coach.

Val-d’Or has won their past six QMJHL playoff series, including three of their last four over the past two post-seasons in seven games, and relied a lot on their experience to eke out wins against the Rouyn-Noranda Huskies and Baie-Comeau.

Most championship teams that retain key players, like Anthony Richard, Anthony Beauregard, Nicolas Aubé-Kubel and Jérémie Fraser, get boosts the next season as they grow into the roles of departed players. The Foreurs ended up well set up to continue their dominant play from a season ago, and it showed in the second half of the season and so far in the playoffs.

If they can keep riding that wave into this series, they could knock off the league’s number one seed.

The Foreurs are 4-2 on the road, and 4-3 at home so far, so they have taken a balanced approach. Val-d’Or plays the same game no matter the rink, and they get up for road games.

They are prone to one bad game a series, at least that has been the case so far in 2015, but it’s just game 2s they can’t win (8-3 loss vs. Rouyn-Noranda, 9-1 loss vs. Baie-Comeau). They play much better outside of game 2, so if the Foreurs can win game 1 and get a split, they could carry it into their two games at home.