Oh, Legault, what a night
Undrafted veteran registers seven points — one point off record
Stephane Legault is all too used to the No. 7 beside his name on the roster.
Just not in the points column.
No. 7 for the Edmonton Oil Kings had a night for the ages Friday, recording seven points to finish one point shy of the Western Hockey League playoff single-game record, as the defending WHL champion Oil Kings cruised to a 9-0 win over the Kootenay Ice in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference quarter-finals at Rexall Place.
“It’s one of those nights where everything he touched turned into gold,” Oil Kings head coach Derek Laxdal said of Legault’s night. “I said, ‘whatever you did last night, make sure you do it tomorrow night (to get ready for Game 2).’”
A three-goal outburst from Legault in the first, which tied a WHL playoff record for goals in a period, set the tone for Edmonton’s most dominant win of the season, as the Oil Kings took a 1-0 lead in the best-of-seven series.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had a night like that where it’s like everything I touch seems to be going in and I wouldn’t expect it every night, that’s for sure, but it’s definitely nice” said Legault, who became the first player to score three goals in a WHL playoff period since Matt Calvert pulled off the feat for Brandon in 2010.
“It was weird. I was just doing the same things I’d been doing (in the regular season) and I kind of had puck luck tonight.”
“I got some big passes and just went to the net hard and got rewarded for it.”
A pair of goals from Legault, combined with a marker from Oilers prospect Travis Ewanyk, who inked a three-year entrylevel deal with the NHL club earlier in the day, in the span of less than three minutes ignited Edmonton in the opening frame.
After a breakout playoffs a year ago when he notched 14 points in 20 games, Legault picked up exactly where he left off last post-season. The unheralded veteran, who was passed over in both the WHL bantam draft and NHL draft, posted a career-best seven points by the time the dust had settled.
That total put Legault in some exclusive company, as he finished tied with Dave Kryskow (1971 Oil Kings), Dale Derkatch (1981 Regina) and Darryl Sydor (1991 Kamloops) for the second most points in a WHL playoff game, only a point back of record holders Alfie Turcotte (1981 Brandon) and Dave Chartier (1983 Portland).
“(T.J. Foster) told me after the game in the dressing room there that eight was the record,” said Legault when asked if he knew he finished a point back of tying the mark. “All in all I’m pretty happy with tonight. From a team standpoint, obviously, we wanted to get off to a good start and personally it was nice, too.”
For teammate Keegan Lowe, seeing his hardworking teammate, who had 41 points in the regular season playing up and down Edmonton’s forward lines, get rewarded was all too fitting.
“I’ve known (Legault) my whole life and he’s just a happygo-lucky kid — nothing really brings him down too much,” Lowe pointed out.
“He always has that big smile on his face. If I could ask for anyone to have a night like that, it’s him. He deserves it. He’s one of the hardest working guys on our team, if not the (hardest).”
While the game was all but over after the first when Edmonton took a five-goal cushion into the locker-room, that didn’t stop the Oil Kings from pouring it on Kootenay, who were Edmonton’s first victims in the playoffs last season.
Goals from Michael St. Croix, Cody Corbett and Lowe in the middle frame ran the score to 8-0, as the Ice threw in the white towel, before Trevor Cheek scored his second of the night to make it 9-0 in the third.
Along with their offensive explosion, the Oil Kings also got plenty of help from Laurent Brossoit, who was a busy man despite all the goals in front of him. He stopped all 28 shots he faced to record his third career playoff shutout.
After a day off Saturday, the two teams will go at it again Sunday. Puck drop for Game 2 is 4 p.m. at Rexall Place.
“There’s going to be a pushback from both teams every game and obviously it’s playoffs, so you throw this game out the door, win or lose, and you get ready for Sunday, because it’s a new day, it’s a new game and you’ve got to be ready to play,” Laxdal said.
On the day the 2012 WHL champion Edmonton Oil Kings began the long playoff grind to defend that title with a 9-0 demolition of the Kootenay Ice, general manager Bob Green wasn’t about to make a fuss about being named the league’s executive-of-the-year for a second straight season.
“Must have been a slow year,” Green said, in an interview in his spartan Rexall Place office.
Not a bad year, at that. The Oil Kings repeated as Eastern Conference champions, set club records for victories (51) and points (108) and set a franchise attendance record.
On Friday night, winger Stephane Legault almost set a WHL single-game playoff points record, with a natural hat trick in the first period and four assists for the game — a seven-point tour de force, one shy of the league mark.
Building a league champion and Memorial Cup participant was a five-year slog for Green and his staff. Keeping the excellence going a second straight year has been something to witness, also.
“I think there’s a little bit of luck involved,” Green said. “We carried over so many players, which is unusual for a team in major junior hockey. We didn’t have to make an abundance of changes.”
Sixteen players on the club’s 24-player Oil Kings roster are holdovers from the team that won the 2013 WHL championship and advanced to the Memorial Cup tournament in Shawinigan, Que., which speaks to continuity, team cohesion, experience, on and on.
It’s not as if Green had to rebuild on the fly. In fact, he only made two deals all season, both with the Vancouver Giants: one in October to bring in defenceman David Musil, an Oilers draft pick; another at the January trade deadline to bring in overage forward Trevor Cheek.
Green sent his first-round WHL bantam draft pick in 2013 and youngster Mason Geertsen to Vancouver for Musil; a second-round draft pick, one obtained from Portland, fetched Cheek, who scored a pair of goals and added an assist against the Ice.
Cheek also hit the post in the third period on a gilt-edged scoring attempt that would have given him a hat trick and Legault eight points for the night, had he buried it.
It also would have satisfied the Friday night crowd of 7,496, who were chanting, “We want 10! We want 10!” for much of the third period.
Apart from the uncertainty over the NHL lockout and its implications for the Oil Kings (the possibility of losing defenceman Griffin Reinhart, which proved moot) the key issue with the club, Green said, has been ensuring the club didn’t look too far ahead, treat the regular season as a lengthy annoyance to be endured so the team could embark on another lengthy playoff run.
I know, I know, first-world problems, right? But we’re talking about keeping teenage boys on task here.
“It’s tough,” Green said. “You know what, I thought our coaches did a great job.
“I think at times we were guilty of looking ahead when we shouldn’t have been. But what gives us the hunger is, first of all, very rarely do you ever have the opportunity to sit down at the start of the year and say, we’ve got a legitimate chance to go to the Memorial Cup. That just doesn’t come around very often.
“It’s something I don’t like to talk about. I don’t like to talk that way about our team, I let other people speak to that.”
But, make no mistake, to a man, the Oil Kings have been on a season-long mission to finish the job they didn’t quite complete last year.
“It’s easy to sit back and say, ‘Geez, we weren’t very good there (Memorial Cup), I can’t wait to get back there,’ ” Green said. “Well, you’ve got to win 16 games to get back there.”
The way the Oil Kings strafed Kootenay, it appeared the Oil Kings were trying to win all 16 games on one night.
Not so, said Cheek. They weren’t even trying to rack up the points.
“I don’t think we thought about it too much,” Cheek said. “Those kind of things happen — they just happen, like I said. I thought we focused on playing hard and getting in on the forecheck.
“I thought we got a few bounces here and there and we finished our chances.”
The Oil Kings, Cheek said, were just beginning the playoff job the right way. Other than taking a couple of needless early penalties they had to kill, the Oil Kings played a superb game, from puck drop to final whistle.
“We’ve got a lot of experience in this locker-room. Everyone knows that anything can happen any night, so I think we’re going to be prepared every night,” Cheek said. “When you’re in the playoffs and you’re going to play them again, you’ve to make sure you don’t give them any hope that they can beat us.
“So, we kept the pedal to the metal and we’re going to do that every night and every shift.”