Oceanic stay alive against Eagles
The Rimouski Oceanic are down in the best-of-seven Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League series with the Cape Breton Eagles, but not out.
Rimouski edged the Eagles 4-3 in Game 4 of the series in front of 2,769 fans in Rimouski, Que., on Wednesday night.
Mael St-denis, Anthony Pare, Alexandre Blais and former Eagle Charles Savoie each netted goals for the Oceanic, who still trail the series 3-1.
Xavier Daigle, Cam Macdonald and Olivier Houde replied with goals for the Eagles.
Rimouski’s William Lacelle made 30 saves for his first career QMJHL playoff victory. Cape Breton’s Nicolas Ruccia stopped 21 of 25 shots.
The Eagles opened the scoring near the six-minute mark of the first period with Daigle scoring his second goal of the playoffs, but Pare tied the game shortly after with his first of the playoffs at 9:47.
Cape Breton regained the lead with Macdonald notching his fourth of the postseason, but the Oceanic responded with goals by Blais and Savoie, on the power play, to take a 3-2 lead into the first intermission.
The Oceanic took a 4-2 lead into the final stanza with a second-period goal by Stdenis. The Eagles cut the lead to one at 8:49 of the third period with a Houde goal, but that’s as close as they’d come to tying the game.
Cape Breton outshot Rimouski 33-25 while going 0-for-2 on the power play. The Oceanic were 2-for-3 with the man-advantage.
Game 5 of the series will be played Friday night in Rimouski. Game 6 and 7, if necessary, will be played on Monday and Tuesday at Centre 200 in Sydney. Puck drop for both those games would be 7 p.m.
Notes: Jude Campbell (healthy), Noah Larochelle (healthy) and Etienne Desjardins (healthy) were out of the lineup for Cape Breton.; Luke Coughlin (injury), Quentin Miller (injury), Ben Cross (healthy), Pierre-marc Minville (healthy) and Brett Arsenault (healthy) did not dressed for Rimouski.