Jacob Fowler gave the Laval Rocket every chance to steal their opener on Friday night. His teammates never found a way to meet him halfway. The Syracuse Crunch left Place Bell with a 2-0 win, and Nick Abruzzese, who scored both goals, made the difference on a night when the Rocket spent too much time in the penalty box.
Fowler Keeps It Close
Fowler faced 31 shots and stopped 29 of them (.935). The Rocket got 27 shots at the other end, but Syracuse goaltender Mads Søgaard turned all 27 aside for the shutout. Through two periods, Syracuse had outshot Laval 20-8, and Fowler turned aside several quality chances to keep the score at 1-0 well into the third period.
Abruzzese opened the scoring at 14:13 of the first period, finishing a play set up by rookie Sam O’Reilly, who picked up his first professional point in his first professional game. Fowler then kept the margin there for more than two periods.
Penalties Decide It
Syracuse got six power plays in the game and scored on one of them. It was the one that mattered most. Early in the third, with two Rocket players in the box, Abruzzese buried a 5-on-3 goal at 7:04, assisted by Dylan Duke and Jakob Pelletier, and the Rocket never recovered. The Rocket, meanwhile, went 0-for-2 on their own power plays, and Syracuse’s penalty kill was 2-for-2.
A Team Still Coming Together
Coach Daniel Jacob pointed to the roster as part of the explanation. Syracuse brought back 13 of its 18 skaters from last season, while the Rocket had only nine returning players and eight new faces making their debuts, with a few key players still up with the Canadiens. Jacob said he would have been upset if the loss had come down to a lack of effort, but he did not see that, and he liked how his group responded in the third period.
Jacob changed some of his lines for the final 20 minutes, and the Rocket pushed back with 19 shots in the third, compared with 11 for Syracuse. Eight of those 19 came in the closing minutes, with Laval playing six skaters against four.
David Reinbacher, now on the Rocket, played on the top defense pair with Luke Mittelstadt and got a lot of penalty-kill time on a night that asked plenty of the back end.
What’s Next
There is no time to dwell on it. The Rocket and Crunch play again Saturday afternoon at Place Bell, with a 3 p.m. puck drop, to finish the weekend double-header. Full schedules and standings are on the AHL’s official site.
Coach’s Take
The short version of this game is that Jacob Fowler is the only reason it wasn’t five or six to nothing. He tracked the puck well all night, stayed square to every shooter and never looked rattled. He was the best player on the ice.
The Rocket’s real problem was cohesion. Syracuse was faster, forechecked hard and clogged the neutral zone, and that is a difficult opponent for a group that has barely played together. But even allowing for that, Laval looked disconnected. First passes were behind the intended man or missed him altogether, and the Rocket could barely get into the offensive zone with possession. Their first real scoring chance of the night was a Brett Berard breakaway in the third period.
I understand the circumstances. With so many players in and out of the lineup and a short camp to build chemistry, this was always going to be messy early. Still, a team in that spot has to be more opportunistic with the few chances it does get.
There were positives. The penalty kill looked sharp, and Fowler made big saves at the right moments to help it. Among the Habs prospects, Reinbacher and Mittelstadt had a good game overall on the back end. Owen Protz had a tougher night and had to adjust to the pace of the game in his own zone at different points, which isn’t unusual early in a season. Owen Beck was much like last year: not a big factor offensively, but useful on the penalty kill.
Nobody is panicking, and nobody should. The players and the coach both said so after the game, and that is the right message. Give this group a few games to find its chemistry and cohesion before drawing conclusions.
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