The Chronicle Herald (Provincial)
Top 10 items of interest at season’s end
Every QMJHL season is packed with trends, events, quirks, narratives and everything in between, even without the added wrinkle of COVID-19 from the past three campaigns.
So before we throw ourselves into the playoffs on Thursday, here are 10 of the most interesting items from the 2021-22 ride:
1. Sea Dogs success: There is nothing quite as pressurepacked in junior hockey as hosting the Memorial Cup. It hangs over everyone in the organization from the minute the bid result is announced.
The players feel it throughout the process, first as they worry about being traded and then in every game as they try to prove they can represent the league adequately on the national stage. The general manager shoulders a massive burden as he tries to construct a roster that can win and the coach has to be ready to roll with constant changes while he tries to create a healthy team culture and shape his group into a cohesive, functional unit. Talk about stress.
But with all of those variables in play the past several months, Saint John GM Trevor Georgie managed to stack his lineup with elite talent and valuable role players, while coach Gordie Dwyer molded them into a juggernaut down the stretch. Georgie made six trades at the mid-season deadline - all of them significant - and Dwyer then took all of those pieces and now has the Sea Dogs on a 15-game winning streak heading into the post-season. By any measure, that is a tremendous success for everyone involved.
2. Nifty 50: There will always be something special about 50 goals in hockey and the league had five guys hit that mark this year.
Leading the parade was Saint John's William Dufour with 56 but Quebec's Zachary Bolduc and Charlottetown's Patrick Guay were just one back at 55 and Sherbrooke linemates Joshua Roy and Xavier Parent matched each other with 51. There was something special attached to the milestone for every one of those players.
Dufour's breakout earned him a contract with the New York Islanders. Guay set a new Islanders single-season record. Bolduc produced five hat tricks to jusfify the high price the Remparts paid to acquire him from Rimouski. Roy proved his doubters wrong after slipping to the fifth round of the NHL draft. And Parent matched his combined goal output from his first four seasons to finish on a high as an overager.
3. Habs haul: Speaking of Roy, he edged Dufour for the league scoring title after a messy 2020-21 that saw him demand a trade out of Saint John after being the No. 1 pick in the 2019 QMJHL draft.
It likely played a part in him falling to 150th overall in the draft last July but the Montreal Canadiens are surely smiling about the steal now. The Habs also grabbed Riley Kidney of the Bathurst Titan in the second round (63rd overall) last year and the Enfield native rewarded them with a 100-point season.
Not only that but Montrael also selected defenceman William Trudeau (fourth round, 44 points) and Xavier Simoneau (sixth round, league runner-up with 1.79 points per game) from the Islanders last year. That is some tremendous value out of the Q for the Canadiens.
4. Bourque and Bourgault: The only player to produce at a higher rate than Simoneau in 2021-22 was Shawinigan Cataractes captain Mavrik Bourque, who finished the year at 2.19 points per game (68 points in 31 games).
He had six games with four points or more, but get this - he was only held pointless in one game all year and that was all the way back in October. Bourque enters the playoffs on a 24-game streak (58 points), punctuated by a six-point night in Shawinigan's season finale.
And don't forget his running mate Xavier Bourgault. Like Bourque, the Edmonton Oilers first-rounder dealt with injuries this season but still managed to score 36 goals in just 43 games to finish with 75 points and a 1.74 PPG mark. He also had six points in Shawinigan's final game so the Cataractes stars are coming into the first round hot. 5. Tigres goalie pipeline: Apparently the place for contenders to find No. 1 netminders this year was in Victoriaville.
The Remparts targeted Fabio Iacobo in an off-season trade and the Sea Dogs went hard after Nikolas Hurtubise at the deadline. Iacobo finished the year with the second best goals against average in the league among starters (2.42) and Hurtubise has a 14-4 record in a Saint John uniform.
It bears repeating the Tigres won last year's QMJHL title, while the Remparts finished first overall this season and the Sea Dogs were third so those two goalies sure do make a difference.
And let's not forget the player now wearing the 'C' in Saint John is former Tigres defenceman Vincent Sevigny, who was another one of Georgie's major deadline acquisitions.
6. Draft intrigue: Usually the price for going all in to win a championship is a lean season or two afterwards.
The Tigres missed this year's playoffs and only finished ahead of the Cape Breton Eagles in the overall standings. Surely they don't regret it one bit now that they have a new banner hanging in their rink in Victoriaville. Those two teams will have the best odds of winning the draft lottery for the first overall pick and whoever they select will be a huge part of their reconstruction.
7. Playoff spoilers: Just about everyone already knows the six teams favoured to win this year's title are Quebec, Charlottetown, Bathurst, Sherbrooke, Saint John and Shawinigan. But who scares them the most from the second tier?
Without a doubt the Gatineau Olympiques are the most probable spoiler after finishing second in the Western Conference on the strength of an eight-game unbeaten streak down the stretch. Assuming they make it out of the first round, the Olympiques are flush with blossoming young talent, as well as a few clutch veterans at key positions, so they will make their next opponent quite uncomfortable.
Likewise, the Mooseheads are the younngest team in the league and should be one of the front-runners with the Olympiques to win a championship next year. But they're on a seven-game winning streak and that surely has the attention of their first-round opponent, the struggling Titan.
8. Jordan 'Gentleman' Dumais: It's old news that Jordan Dumais finished third in league scoring and broke Jonathan Drouin's Mooseheads record for points by a 17-year-old with 109. But did you also notice he only took three penalties all season?
Dumais appeared in all 68 games for the Mooseheads and was always one of their leaders in ice time so spending a total of six minutes in the box is rather remarkable. He has to be a lock for the league's award for most gentlemanly player.
At the other end of the spectrum is Dumais' teammate Zac Beauregard, who ran away with the league penalty crown for a second straight season. The fivefoot-seven agitator racked up 128 minutes to finish well ahead of Miguel Tourigny (96 PIM). Beauregard was also suspended three times.
Beauregard also led the QMJHL last season with 82 penalty minutes in 38 games for the Islanders.
But before anyone even thinks of seeing any of that as a negative, his abrasiveness is exactly why the Mooseheads traded for him and his teammates and coaches love him for it.
9. Rookie standouts: The highest-scoring firstyear player in the league this season was Charlottetown's Jakub Brabenec with 64 points in 58 games and that is an outstanding season by any standard. But the Czech sniper played as an 18-yearold, while Halifax's Mathieu Cataford led all 16-year-olds with 46 points and was the most productive non-import. He placed third among all rookies, with Sherbrooke's 18-year-old Czech defenceman David Spacek finishing second with 50 points. And how about Sambro's Jacob Newcombe as the top domestic 17-year-old rookie with 36 points for the Chicoutimi Sagueneens? Pretty impressive for a seventh-round pick.
(And by the way, Moncton's Yoan Loshing is listed ahead of Newcombe on that list on the QMJHL site but he played in 19 games last year and was with the Wildcats all season so I'm not sure why he even has a rookie designation.)
10. D scoring exploits: Nobody should be surprised that Charlottetown's Lukas Cormier (81 points) and Tourigny (80 points) finished first and second in league scoring by defencemen this year.
They are established stars who merely continued their normal level of production.
But did anyone have Kale Mccallum of Val-d'or finishing third in that race? The New Brunswick native jumped from nine points last season with the Sea Dogs to 69 this year. He was Saint John's eighth-round pick in 2018 and was little more than an afterthought in the offseason trade that sent goalie Jonathan Lemieux to the Sea Dogs. That's quite a nice return for the Foreurs on their investment.