QMJHL first round playoff preview: Part 1 – contenders vs. pretenders

While the OHL and the WHL have tidy conference series to get though, their partner in la belle province and all points eastward does the early-80s-NHL thing and lines all the teams up, 1-to-16, and matches them up. While it does insure that, most of the time, the best teams and best matchups are saved for later, it can lead to some stinkers in the early rounds.

These series below are the top President’s Cup contenders and their first round opponents, who will largely try and extend a quick and painless death. Though upsets do happen to the top seeds in the first round, they are very rare.

Moncton-Chicoutimi have a bizarre schedule of Thursday-Sunday for the first two games, otherwise every other series starts off Friday-Saturday for games 1 & 2.

(4) Québec Remparts (40-25-1-2, 83 points) vs. (13) Cape-Breton Screaming Eagles (31-31-3-3, 68 points)

Season series: Cape Breton 1-0-1-0. Final Dynamic Dozen rankings: Remparts 15th, Screaming Eagles 38th. Prediction: Remparts in 5.

Series in a sentence: The Remparts Memorial Cup climb as hosts starts against the rough but young Screaming Eagles, who should be a good test to start.

Why the Remparts should win: The Remparts are stacked with offence, with six players with 50 points or more, including Dmytro Timashov, who led the team with 90, and that doesn’t include the team’s biggest weapon, Anthony Duclair, who returned to the team after spending the first half of the season in the NHL with the New York Rangers. It also doesn’t include shifty forward Vladimir Tkachev, who just missed at 49. Their offence continues through the blueline, as four defencemen have 26 points or more.

With blueliner Olivier LeBlanc out for at least the first round, this is a mismatch waiting to happen.

How the Screaming Eagles can stretch out the series: The Remparts have had their share of drama involving their impact players in March, with Duclair sitting as a healthy scratch for a game and Timashov and Tkachev punished for not having their mouthguards at the start of a period. While these situations don’t mean the Remparts don’t have a good teams, most great teams have their house in order, and it appears that Québec may not.

Also, the Remparts paid big on the chance that Zachary Fucale will play well and lead them to the front door of the Memorial Cup, but he’s had a very down year, save for the WJCs. His numbers are down across the board and he’s coming into the playoffs 8-8 as the Remparts starter. That’s the kind of netminding Screaming Eagles forwards Kyle Farrell, Evgeni Svechnikov and Maxim Lazarev can feast on.

(3) Blainville-Boisbriand Armada (41-18-2-7, 91 points) vs. (14) Gatineau Olympiques (31-31-0-6, 68 points)

Season series: Blainville-Boisbriand 5-3. Final Dynamic Dozen rankings: Armada 9th, Olympiques 24th. Prediction: Armada in 7.

Series in a sentence: Blainville-Boisbriand get the tough draw, facing a Gatineau team that has won 13 of it’s last 16 games.

Why the Armada should win: The top three teams of the Q play three distinctly different styles, and they all work well for their rosters. The Rimouski Oceanic attack in waves with their depth. The Moncton Wildcats play run and gun, relying on two key players up front but jumping at their chances and scoring in bunches. The Armada are the patient, puck-possession team that can lull you into a security, and then pummel you senseless once their top line hits the ice.

Danick Martel, Nikita Jevpalovs and Philippe Sanche might be the most talented top line in the Q, and they are all weapons with the shot or the pass.

The Armada also hold the edge in the netminding battle, as Samuel Montembeault has been solid all year, while the Olympiques have overager François Brassard, who is good but washed out of Québec and Cape Breton in the last year. Brassard would hold the edge in goal-scoring though, becoming the first netminder to score twice in one season.

Why the Olympiques could win: While the Armada top line is real dangerous, they can be zeroed in on, and if they can be rendered ineffective, there isn’t a ton of scoring after that. The highest goal total from a player not on the Armada top trio is Marc-Antoine Bouillon’s 16 goals.

In exactly the opposite way, the Olympiques have plenty of depth up front. Louick Marcotte had a down year, but had 37 points in the playoffs last season for President’s Cup winning Val-d’Or. The Europeans Yakov Trenin and Valentin Zykov are both strong and smart, and Yan Pavel Laplante, Alex Dostie and Tommy Veilleux are no slouches either.

(2) Moncton Wildcats (46-19-0-3, 95 points) vs. (15) Chicoutimi Saguenéens (29-32-4-3, 65 points)

Season series: Tied 1-1. Final Dynamic Dozen rankings: Wildcats 13th, Saguenéens 37th. Prediction: Wildcats in 5.

Series in a sentence: Mismatch offensively, but a matchup between the defending goaltender of the week (Alex Dubeau) and the defending goaltender of the month (Julio Billia) makes this series more intriguing.

Why the Wildcats should win: Moncton was the highest scoring team in the Q this season, largely on the backs of league-leading scorer Conor Garland and his partner-in-crime Ivan Barbashev. A mid-season trade of Vladimir Tkachev opened up a spot on the wing for Garland, and he took full advantage, leading the league in points with 129.

Behind that, a lot of useful players dot the forward ranks, providing good depth in all facets of the game, and the blue line jumps in the play plenty with Dominic Talbot-Tassi and Jacob Sweeney both earning 46 points or more. The Wildcats use speed to succeed and they have plenty of it.

How the Saguenéens can stretch out the series: The Sags may not have the offence the Cats do, so they need to turn the ice into a parking lot, slow down the Wildcat forwards and grind them against the boards and behind the goal. Moncton isn’t a particularly big team, so they need to keep the puck moving. Block the passing lanes and clog up the ice, and they will get slowed down. More offence from players not named Laurent Dauphin will also help plenty.

A great goalie can slow down an offence too, or at least a good netminder who is hot. Billia is the latter, and he’s coming in hot.

(1) Rimouski Oceanic (47-16-3-2, 99 points) vs. (16) Victoriaville Tigres (27-34-3-4, 61 points)

Season series: Rimouski 4-2. Final Dynamic Dozen rankings: Oceanic 3rd, Tigres 49th. Prediction: Oceanic in 4.

Series in a sentence: The second-best offence matches up against the league’s worst defence in what should be quick, and could be ugly, dismantling of a series.

Why the Oceanic should win: A quick tale of the tape should suffice. Rimouski beats Victoriaville in a count of NHL draft picks, 5-to-1, including Team Canada members Frédérick Gauthier and Samuel Morin. Vincent Dunn was sent home before the final weekend of the regular season, which would have made this 6-to-1. His absence may be felt later on, but not in this series. Five doesn’t even include the top two leading scorers of the Oceanic, Anthony DeLuca and Alexis Loiseau, with 91 and 96 points respectively.

How does Victoriaville handle that kind of depth? On the shoulders of captain Tristan Pomerleau and not much else on the blueline, and the backs of starter Chase Marchand, who’s never made a playoff start. They could go to former Oceanic netminder Olivier Tremblay, who played three playoff games for Rimouski last year, but he was 2-8 this season, and didn’t win any of his three appearances in the playoffs.

How the Tigres can stretch out the series: The Tigres have some offensive depth as well, in the name of Angelo Miceli, Samuel Blais, Mathieu Ayotte and the pleasant surprise of Gabriel Gagné. If they can keep pucks out of their net, they could hang around enough to bury a couple past Philippe Desrosiers.