Earlier this week, I touched upon the fact that regular season hockey and playoff hockey are two very different animals. If you were at the Coliseum last night, you got a first hand look at this theory. The Wildcats played their opening game of the playoffs in regular season mode. And the final result was a reflection of that.
The most amazing part of this game for me was that the style Victoriaville employed last night was nearly identical to systems used the last time the two teams met at the Coliseum. They are systematic. They play the 1-3-1 very well. When the game is tied or the Tigres are otherwise on the attack, they seldom enter the offensive zone three wide - it's usually a two man entry. When they have a lead, they may switch to a more traditional trap, with four men stationed on the red line. Bottom line, you generally have a good idea in terms of what you can expect.
So, a team employing an almost identical game plan in two separate contests. That can only mean that it was the Cats who switched things up.
And how they switched things up was by playing with less urgency, not hitting the attacking blueline with speed, playing the dump and chase when that tactic was simply not going to be a viable option and failing to move the puck with much precision or strength. The Tigres simply waited for an opportunity and when that opportunity presented itself, they took full advantage.
The aspect that concerns me the most is that Yannick Jean's team has been in this exact same situation before. That was in 2011. Victo was an 11th place team in the regular season that year as well. They played Bathurst in the first round. They employed a similar style. The results? Surprising to most.
Will this Wildcats team fall into the same trap as the Titan two years ago? I'm leaning towards no... but how the first ten minutes play out in Game 2 will go a long way towards swaying my opinion one way or the other. If Moncton comes out with speed, force their way through the neutral zone clogging Tigres system and force Victo into changing their style to the type of game they are ill suited to play, the mood and momentum of this series will shift quickly. Long story short, the Cats have to do something in Game 2 that they didn't do in Game 1: make things tough for the Tigres. Although Victoriaville was full marks for last night's victory, that doesn't mean they didn't look like a beatable team.
So now we wait for this evening. And the same question I've been asking since the fall crops up once again - what Moncton Wildcats team will show up? It's a question I can never seem to get a consistent answer to.
Meanwhile in Woodstock, the Dieppe Commandos left the rink even deeper in the hole, down three games to none after a 6-2 Slammers victory. Jake Wright, Brennan Saulnier, EJ Faust and Ian Lewis posted two points each as Woodstock jumped out to a 3-1 lead after 20 minutes and never looked back. One of the most bizarre aspects of this series has to be the fact that Dieppe is actually winning the special teams battle by a decent sized margin after three games. Despite being outscored by an aggregate of 18-5, they are a perfect 11/11 on the penalty kill while going 3/11 on the powerplay, good for first and second overall respectively among the teams in the MHL playoffs to this point. To say that five on five play has been the Commandos' Achilles heel would definitely be an understatement.
It becomes even more of a shift by shift scenario for Dieppe as they head back to the AJL for Game 4 on Sunday at 2:30. The Commandos are capable of extending this series. Now more than ever is the time for capabilities to translate into results.
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