Wildcats hope to get back to hot first half play

Much like a high school relationship, things can go up and down like a toilet seat for a major junior hockey club throughout a season. The highs are sky-high, and the lows are valleys.

The Moncton Wildcats were at the top of the table on January 10, just after beating a tough Saint John Sea Dog team on the road. With a 28-10-0-3 record, they were the surprise toast of the league.

“If in August, September, you told me we’d be in first overall in the league, I’d be a bit surprised,” head coach Darren Rumble said. “So I think we’ve had a very successful first half-plus. I think we’ve had a lot of guys over-achieve.”

Then a loss to the Blainville-Boisbriand Armada at home starts a skid. Then a tough three-game road trip.

Two weekends ago was a defining road trip for the team, taking on Blainville-Boisbriand, the Rimouski Oceanic and the 2015 Memorial Cup host Quebec Remparts in a three-games-in-three-days stretch.

The three game road trip had the Wildcats facing three teams who combine right now for 87 wins in 142 games, a winning percentage of .612. Rough weekend.

The Wildcats lost two of the three games, getting outscored 17-9 in the process, including 8-3 to the Armada and 7-3 to the Oceanic.

Cue up an embarrassing effort in a 7-1 loss to the scorching hot Cape Breton Screaming Eagles last Saturday, but a tightly-played 3-2 shootout win against the Acadie-Bathurst Titan, the worst team in the circuit, and you have yourself a slide, but one with light at the end of the tunnel.

Call it the rebound.

“Was I thinking we might stumble a bit? Yeah everybody has a period during the season,” Rumble continued. “Am I surprised we’re in a bit of a rut? No. Everybody hits bumps in the road and we’re kind of in that right now.

“It’s up to us to keep our heads down and keep playing hard and find a way to get back to the way we played in the first half.”

The players acknowledge the road trip was a good measuring stick for the team, but they’re confident they’ll be up to the task next time around.

“We know we can be a force in the league,” said starting netminder Alex Dubeau. “I don’t think that all 60 minutes of those games were bad. Our starts were not great.

“Their speed, their quickness, the way they make their passes; we’ve seen it now and we know we can play with them and we’ve showed it in the past.”

“It was a measuring stick,” added forward Conor Garland. “You can’t really judge the third game in three nights, especially against Rimouski. It’s one thing if they are a middling team, but they are unbelievable.

“Sure, we didn’t play great in Blainville, but we played great in Quebec in a 3-in-3. We know what we have to do now. Come back here and work and try to pick up more wins as the season goes along.”

As Garland goes, so do the Cats.

The shifty pint-sized winger has a QMJHL-leading 77 points in 47 games. Along with fellow forward Ivan Barbashev, the duo make up one of the most talented and productive two-somes in the league, with 130 points among the two of them.

The team got tougher and more experienced over the trading period to build around Garland and Barbashev, at the sacrifice of some offense. Moncton brought in forwards Taylor Burke, Bronson Beaton and Noah Zilbert, while shipping out former captain Christophe Lalonde, Mathieu Olivier and the enigmatic Vladimir Tkachev.

Lalonde was replaced with co-captains, one of whom is Burke, who has a new fan in head coach Darren Rumble.

“He’s awesome,” said Rumble. “[He’s a] key guy for us; a good leader. For a guy to come in and get voted co-captain and he’s only been here a couple weeks it speaks volumes. He takes key faceoffs and starts every powerplay and every penalty kill. He plays against any team’s top line. He’s been quite an addition for us. He’s Mr. Everything.”

The good news is the Moncton Wildcats are just a point off of the top spot in the QMJHL, even with a four-losses-out-of-six stretch. Coach Rumble has noticed some complacency through the wins in the last month or so, and it’s culminated in the losses lately.

“The goals against, there has been a trend,” coach Rumble explained. “It’s been trying to do too much in the D zone. Another term for that is puck focused. We’ve had a lot of over-puck focusing, instead of letting just one player take the puck carrier. There have been some simple goals scored against us.”

With 21 games remaining for the Wildcats, they are very much in the stretch drive. They have as even a split as you can get home and road: 11 games left at home, including the final two, and 10 on the road.

Rimouski has an identical 11-10 split for leftover games, while Quebec has 11 at home and 8 on the road to close the season out. The Baie-Comeau Drakkar is looking at 11-11, and Blainville-Boisbriand has 9 home games and 11 on the road, including the last three. The top of the league is wide open, and each team controls their own destiny at this point.

Rumble maintains this is a team on the rebound, and there is evidence of improvement.

“The road trip is tough but we aren’t making any excuses,” he continued. “A road trip up there is a tough trip with the travel and the guys are required to do. I had a feeling it might go the way it did.

“When you come back the first game after a road trip is a stinker. At the NHL level, the sure bet is the team coming back from a road trip they usually struggle. We’ve had some tough games, not as many good ones as we did pre-Christmas. [The Acadie-Bathurst game] I saw some stuff I liked, and hopefully we’ll build on that.”

He adds that it could be a combination of fatigue and some complacency that needs to be addressed.

So do the players.

“I don’t think the scores were really indicative of the play,” saidBurke. “I think all we had to do was keep working hard, keep moving our feet, play our game and keep it simple. I think we tried to complicate things a little too much and when we keep it simple that seems to work for us.”

Moncton takes on the Titan in a rematch in Acadie-Bathurst Thursday, and then back home to face the Drakkar Friday.

Burke said all you can do is move forward from a stretch like this.

“It’s in the past,” he said. “Once the game is done you just gotta be able to park it and move forward.

“We have a pretty confident team, so I think we’re able to do that pretty well. I don’t see us falling from a couple bad games I think our confidence is still going to be high.”