Rimouski, Quebec battle for President’s Cup after both earning berths in the 2015 Memorial Cup

A major rivalry for a league final is always a good thing, and Rimouski-Québec is one of the biggest in the league right now.

This will be a clash of the ages, as we predicted at the start of the season. (Don’t look at those other picks though. Those are an illusion. Especially the ones we were wrong about.)

But it’s not how predictable the end result is, it’s the journey, and both teams proved to be the best ones in the league, through the regular season, with Rimouski at the top of the table and Quebec in fourth, and in the playoffs, as both teams swept through the Moncton Wildcats and the Val-d’Or Foreurs to get here.

This leads to what should be a heck of a series, but will both teams keep a little left in the tank? Quebec, as hosts, are guaranteed a birth in the 2015 Memorial Cup, and Rimouski, as the next best team, be they winners or runners-up, automatically earn that second league birth. Will there be that same desire and passion to win the series and the President’s Cup? Or will both teams slash through a series at, say, 75-80% where neither wants to get hurt too much.

Both teams have too much at stake to let up, and when you let up, there’s no guarantee you can get back to where you were.

It’s a battle of the homegrown team versus the assembled one and it should provide the best QMJHL hockey of the season. Both teams are coming in on massive winning streaks: Rimouski has won their last eight, and Quebec their last nine.

Series starts Tuesday in Rimouski.

(1) Rimouski Oceanic (47-16-3-2, 99 points) vs. vs. (4) Québec Remparts (40-25-1-2, 83 points)

Season series: Rimouski 5-2-1-0. Final Dynamic Dozen rankings: Oceanic 3th, Remparts 15th. Prediction: Oceanic in 6.

Series in a sentence: Quebec will win game 1, but Rimouski is better on special teams and on defence and will prevail.

Why the Oceanic could win: The Rimouski Oceanic made three additions to their already deep team over the course of the season. In the summer they acquired forward Christopher Clapperton. Before the mid-season trading period, they picked up overage blueliner Charles-David Beaudoin, and during the trading period they grabbed netminder Louis-Philip Guindon.

Those three players have been major keys for their new team. Clapperton was second on the team in scoring in the playoffs and is a consistent threat offensively. Beaudoin has been solid on D, providing stability and an excellent partner for giant defender Samuel Morin, and Guindon might have been the best pickup of any team, going 9-0 in nine games so far in the post-season, with a 1.12 GAA and a .951 save percentage. He has been as close to lights out as a goaltender can get.

Save those three pickups, most of the Oceanic team has played together for the last two or three years. If you take Clapperton out of their scoring list, their top 16(!) scorers are homegrown players, having played only for Rimouski in their QMJHL careers. That is some killer drafting and development by coach and GM Serge Beausoleil.

Rimouski has home-ice in this series, and they come in having won their last eight contests. They swept Val-d’Or without too much trouble, but the same game 1 trouble got to them. In their three game 1s in the playoffs, all at home, they won in overtime twice and lost to Gatineau. They got over it, and the game 1 loss to Gatineau is their only loss so far of the playoffs. The Oceanic haven’t lost on the road in the playoffs; their last road loss was March 13 in Baie-Comeau.

The Oceanic have amazing depth up front. Alexis Loiseau is the top scorer, but Clapperton, Michael Joly and Anthony DeLuca are also worth zeroing in on. They also get good offense from the blueline, as Jan Kostalek has 12 points in 13 games, and Morin also likes to join the rush and unleash his massive slap shot from the point.

If there’s a place to exploit the Remparts, it’s their third pairing. Rookies Ross MacDougall, Aaron Dutra and veteran Brian Lovell are not the blueliners Quebec wants out there if they get hemmed in the defensive zone, and the Oceanic have just the speed and skill to exploit that.

The Oceanic come in with a better power play and a better penalty kill than Quebec so far. Typically, the best teams are teams that can keep their special teams percentage (PP% and PK%) above 105% in total. The Oceanic come in at 118.2%, which is incredibly high. This is an elite special teams squad. Quebec, in contrast, is at 101.3%.

Defensively is where the Oceanic have the advantage. They can get you in every style. Big blueliners like Beaudoin, Morin and Beau Rusk can grind you down. Mobile defencemen like Kostalek, Simon Bourque, Eduard Nasybullin and, again, Morin can skate around you and close gaps quickly. If you get past them, you still have to contend with Guindon, and Philippe Desrosiers if Guindon falters massively. The Oceanic are by far the league’s deepest team.

Why the Remparts could win: The series becomes even more interesting when you consider that Quebec head coach and director of hockey operations Philippe Boucher has an inside knowledge of the Oceanic. He worked above Beausoleil as Oceanic GM, leaving two seasons ago to take over in Quebec, in a kind of dream job, work-from-home scenario.

Boucher has his hands on a number of these Oceanic players, and both coaches know each other in a formerly deep working relationship. That can play out as an advantage for Quebec, as he knows all of the Rimouski veterans from the inside out.

Quebec has been a perpetually good team over the last eleven seasons. They have been above .500 all eleven seasons, and had 40 or more wins in six of their last seven, just missing the seventh with 39. This is a team that always finds a way to get something good together.

They haven’t made the finals in the last nine seasons though, their last foray to the final dance was in 2006, where they lost to the team they just defeated, the Moncton Wildcats. They got their revenge a couple weeks later, defeating the Wildcats on home ice for the 2006 Memorial Cup.

Quebec had an easier time with Moncton than Rimouski had with Val-d’Or, winning all four games handily and three of them by three goals or more. They come in having won nine in a row and they look to be hitting a groove heading into the series, led by their netminder, Zach Fucale. Fucale had a pedestrian regular season, but has won his last nine decisions and 11-of-his-last-12, along with the team, and has looked sharp in those games.

Unlike Guindon in the other cage, Fucale has the pedigree and the experience of playing this deep in the season, winning the 2013 Memorial Cup with the Halifax Mooseheads.

Quebec’s top four blueliners will match up well with Rimouski’s. Ryan Graves has looked very comfortable as a two-way number one blueliner. Nik Brouillard has been to his pesky self, and patrolled the point with gusto. Matt Murphy and Raphaël Maheux have looked great in second pairing minutes.

We called Anthony Duclair an X-factor for the series against Moncton, a sleeping giant that needed to be awoken for the Remparts to have success in the series, and it’s safe to say he’s awake now. 10 points in the four game sweep including three multi-point games, and a five point crescendo in the series’ finale, a 7-0 whitewashing. If there was any doubt about Duclair’s game, it’s gone now.

Alongside Duclair is a plethora of offensive talent. Adam Erne has a league leading 15 goals. Kurt Etchegary has 18 points, both above Duclair’s 16. Euros Dmytro Timashov and Vladimir Tkachev have double digits in points. Jérome Verrier has 14 points in 13 games playing on the lower lines on account of depth. This Remparts team knows how to score, and it may be their only edge on Rimouski. They have scored 68 goals; Rimouski 54. They also boast a very capable fourth line led by tireless forechecker Yanick Turcotte.

If Fucale can outplay the Rimouski two-headed goaltending beast, be it Guindon or Desrosiers, the Remparts have a good chance to win the series, by virtue of their talent up front.