Moose address what went wrong
There is no polite way to say it – the Halifax Mooseheads flopped hard in the QMJHL playoffs.
They finished fourth overall during the regular season, drawing the 12th-place Bathurst Titan in the first round. But the Titan were the better team in every area in the best-of-seven, sending the Mooseheads packing in a humbling sweep.
Now that a few days have passed and the shock has softened, it's worth looking back to try to figure out what went wrong.
LACK OF SCORING
If there was one glaring theme in the series it was the Mooseheads' inability to cope with the Titan's outstanding team defence.
Bathurst only allowed six goals in the series, thanks mostly to a suffocating neutral zone trap and stand-up play at their own blue line. The Mooseheads' best forwards simply could not get into scoring position because they couldn't gain the offensive zone.
Leading scorers Mathieu Cataford (one goal, one assist) and Markus Vidicek (one goal) only mustered a total of three points and the others in Halifax's top six - Lou Levesque, Jan Sprynar, Loufelix Denis and Peter Reynolds – combined for exactly one assist.
It didn't help that stars Jordan Dumais and Jake Furlong were unavailable because of injuries but that kind of low production is never going to be enough to win in the playoffs.
"Obviously, we're disappointed – the players are, the staff is and the fans are – and for good reason," Mooseheads general manager Cam Russell said. "I think we had a very good season but we just couldn't put it together. And there are lots of different reasons for that. You don't want to make excuses but any time you lose the league MVP (Dumais), that's a huge part of your offence, which we've seen the last couple of years.
"Dumais is a game-changer and then losing Furlong your captain – those are two players that were on the world junior team so that really hurts and it affects the psyche of the other players a bit. But at the end of the day, we still felt that we had enough skill and enough good players that we probably should've done more. This is why we're disappointed in the result."
DUMAIS DRAMA
And that opens a different conversation around Dumais, who found himself embroiled in drama since the New Year.
The franchise's all-time points leader returned from the world juniors with a sports hernia that required surgery in January. His rehab had him on track for a lateseason return but then news broke of a drinking and driving charge in March that drew a five-game suspension and subsequently turned into a PR nightmare for the Mooseheads in the eyes of their fans. Many of them vented about the team's lack of transparency and overall handling of the situation, which only escalated leading up to Game 2 when the Mooseheads issued a vague announcement about a new long-term injury to their superstar.
A significant portion of the team's supporters reacted with a wide-ranging wave of negativity and the backlash got so bad at one point the Mooseheads had to shut down the comments section on a Facebook post about Dumais' most recent injury.
Then to add even more fuel to the fire, Kevin Dube of the Journal de Quebec published a report on the weekend that Dumais and Furlong requested a mid-season trade. When asked about it, Russell only said "I'm not going to comment on any private or personal conversations that I have or had with any of our players" so many fans enter the off-season with a sour taste about the connection with their team.
POWER(LESS) PLAY
Also somewhat related to Dumais, his absence was especially noticeable on the power play against the Titan.
Halifax didn't score a single goal with the man advantage, which head coach Jim Midgley points to as the biggest factor in the series loss.
"Five on five we were OK but their special teams were better than ours," Midgley said. "If you look at the analytics, there were three onegoal games and we just didn't get it done on our special teams. I thought our guys gripped it too much all series and then when we had those overtime games, we were too tight."
"We're not going to make any excuses but you need a little puck luck sometimes in the playoffs," he added. "Those things change momentum so maybe if we'd gotten a bounce along the way, especially early on, things might've played out a lot differently."
TRADE GRADES
The glaring lack of production from Denis, Reynolds and Sprynar also raised questions about the Mooseheads approach with the roster.
To be fair to those three, they are all quality players who performed well during the regular season in Halifax. They didn't generate enough in the playoffs but that doesn't make them unique within the team's overall poor showing on the attack.
But it does make you wonder if they were the right fit for what the Mooseheads needed to put them in the mix with the league's other top contenders. Halifax acquired Reynolds from the Saint John Sea Dogs in late December and Denis and Sprynar from the Shawinigan Cataractes in early January.
"The biggest thing is last year we traded away some prime assets – the high draft picks – to go for it last year," Russell said. "We had a good run and came within two wins of going to the Memorial Cup. We felt that we had a good team this year as well and wanted to make another run at it but you're limited in the assets you can move.
"You've got to be careful because you want to move some assets and make a run for it but you also don't want to empty the bank and jeopardize your future moving forward. Those were tough decisions we had to make at the trade deadline and that's why we did what we did. We made the moves to bring in the three players. But like I said, you'd love to unload every year and go for it but that's just not possible if you're being careful of what the future of your team looks like as well."
“Obviously, we’re disappointed – the players are, the staff is and the fans are – and for good reason.” Cam Russell Mooseheads general manager