After a humbling home stand against Saint John and St. John's last week, the Cape Breton Screaming Eagles flew to Newfoundland this week for a two-game set against the Fog Devils, tonight and tomorrow night at Mile One Stadium, where they seek to really redeem themselves for their recent surprising losses.
They'll have to do it without a SLEW of key players. Here is an injury/illness update:
- I'll start with the good news because there isn't much of it. Cam Fergus is expected to return to the lineup tonight after a fairly lengthy absence. He made it through practice yesterday, was a little bit stiff from not playing in a while, but is going to give it a go tonight. We welcome back our sniper and hope that the time off the ice allowed him to heal properly.
- Scott Brannon, who most thought would return to the lineup this week in Newfoundland, will not be back until Monday. There is a new league rule that any player suffering a concussion has to sit out a minimum of a precautionary month, and Scott hasn't quite reached a month yet.
- Jonathan Laberge continues to be out of the lineup with injury (shoulder if I'm not mistaken), and isn't expected for another two weeks or so.
- The real bad news for this pair of games in St. John's: captain James Sheppard is really battling the flu, and didn't even make the trip. We are a totally different team with and without Sheppard in the lineup, and we'll have to rework our offense and find a way to win without him. In the last couple of games where the team couldn't seem to get anything going, he was one of the very few players who seemed able to make anything at all work, and now we won't have him for these two games, so other guys are really going to need to step up.
- Oskars Bartulis is listed as "doubtful" for tonight's game, as apparently he has come up with a minor injury.
- Ondrej Pavelec is also apparently feeling a bit under the weather, and his status to start tonight is up in the air. Recall a game in mid-November against the Halifax Mooseheads where Pavelec was given the start despite being really stricken with the flu. He ended up allowing three goals on four or five shots and being pulled, so if he's really sick tonight, maybe he shouldn't play. Other than this possible flu issue, tonight would surely have been Pavelec's start.
As you can see, our forward corps is really depleted for tonight, even with the return of Fergus. I imagine they will reunite the Ouellet-Fergus-McIlveen combo that has really worked well for long stretches this year, and those are three guys that are really going to have to bring it in the absence of Sheppard. I can't really begin to speculate as to what other line combinations will look like, but it looks as though we'll only have one real proven "scoring line". If we're going to win tonight, it may have to be in ugly, dump-it-in/dump-it-out fashion.
Then again, the last few games we went into as extremely heavy favourite, and it did the team no good whatsoever. Perhaps a change in perspective, going into tonight's game with a fair bit of adversity hanging over our heads, will be good for the Eagles.
St. John's is also missing a few key guys, most notably defencemen Luke Gallant and Pat O'Keefe, two of their top minute-munchers. They'll also be without 16 yos Luke Adam and Taylor MacDougall, who are away participating in the Canada Games tournament, and 20 year olds Maxime Chamberland and Tim Spencer are "maybes" for tonight's game. I'm sure the Eagles will once again have to contend with Ilia Ejov in the Fog Devil goal, and will have to find a way to beat him after being repeatedly stoned by him on Sunday.
Game time is 6:30 PM AST, with the pre-game show starting on CJCB AM 1270 at 6:00.
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A couple of interesting results around the Q last night.
The PEI Rocket defeated the Moncton Wildcats 6-5 in OT from Charlottetown in a very important matchup standings-wise. With the result, PEI has tied Moncton for third place in the East Division standings, and actually now sits just six points back of the second-place Screaming Eagles. They are 10-1-1-1 in their last 13 games, making them the hottest team in the QMJHL. They're a team for us to watch out for, both in the standings now and in the playoffs later, for sure.
Also, the Shawinigan Cataractes broke a ten-game losing streak when they incredibly came back from a 5-1 second period deficit to beat Baie-Comeau 7-5 last night. Coupled with Rimouski's tough 5-2 loss in Quebec (they led 2-1 early in the third period but just couldn't hang on), the Caratactes have opened up an eight-point lead over Rimouski in the battle for the final playoff spot in the "Telus Division".
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With ten games left in the regular season, I figured it's time to look at a few potential team and individual milestones this year's Eagles could eclipse before the campaign is over:
- The team record for goals scored in a season is 286, set by the 2001-2002 edition of the Eagles. This year's team currently sits at 267 goals scored, so they need just 19 goals over their final ten games to break the record. It would also be nice to see the Eagles enjoy their first-ever 300-goal season; they'd need 33 goals over the final ten games for that to happen.
- The team's goals against currently sits at 176.......... by comparison, they gave up just 195 in 2004-2005 (league was lower-scoring back then, as it was prior to the "new rules") and 206 last season. It would be nice if the team could keep the goals against under 200 for the season. The Eagles have really been keeping the goals against down lately.
- The team record for goals scored by a single player in a season is 47 by Ryan Walsh in the Eagles' first season, 97-98. Cam Fergus currently sits at 44 goals, three back of the record.
- The team record for points in a season is held by Dominic Noel, with 105 in 2001-2002. James Sheppard sits at 85 points with ten games remaining, although he won't play in the first two, as stated earlier in the blog. Cam Fergus has 82 points. This record looks like it will be tougher to break by anybody this season.
- The team record for points by a defenceman in one season is 69, set by Mathieu Dumas in 2001-2002. JC Sawyer currently sits at 63 points.
- The best goals for/against differential for a season by an Eagles team is held by the 2003-2004 edition. They had 273 goals for and an impressive 164 goals against, for a differential of +106 on the season. This year's Eagles currently have 267 goals for and 176 against, for a differential of +91, with ten games remaining.
Of course, the "here and now" is a lot more important than the past, and doing well down the stretch/preparing for playoffs is paramount at the moment. I still thought it would be fun to look up those stats from previous years and see how this team could potentially stack up by year's end.
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4 comments:
Wow,looking at the latest update to the blog,I'm thinking that the eagles should thrie own personal doctor!
I hope all of the players will be at 100% or close to it come playoffs.Even with all of the players that are out for 1 reason or another,I really think that the eagles can take these 2 games in NFLD if they play simple hockey.Play well defensively,chip pucks out and create chances offensively by using their speed.
Good LUCK BOYS! GO GET'UM
Well they pulled that one out, too bad about all the injuries especially Shep as he was really tearing it up, he may have broken the points in a season record. What about the plus minus record, is Culligan close?
Wow,what a road trip!The team showed tons of heart with the 2 wins.Most of the team is dieing with the flu,even the coaching staff.Pascal did a great job last night alone on the bench.
Hope all the players and coaching staff are going to be fine for Monday.NFLD tried to bully us around in their barn because they now that the boys were beat down with that flu.Nice try fog devils but it didn't work!
YOUR NEXT P.E.I Rocket!!!!
WOW! What an inspired game that was! In the original blog here, we were concerned about Sheppard not making the trip and Pavelec not feeling up to par. Well, apparently that was the really good news compared to what happened on Friday night. For the team to come out and play with the heart they did, under the conditions they did, I think they deserve a hearty round of applause. To have to dress two injured players and sit them on the bench to make up the team... to have two players and two assistant coaches not even able to make it to the rink... to have three players on the ice while battling the flu... and to still win the game convincingly. Great effort guys! I know the urge is there to say, "well, why can't they play like that every game!", but I prefer to just marvel at the game that they did! And another high point to the night was that Lewiston lost. I bet Bathurst will never have so many Cape Breton fans rooting for them as they will this evening!
On another note, regarding last evening's game... if Ken MacNeil's play-by-play was accurate, and I have no reason to believe that it wasn't (he does get very excited when broadcasting, but that's what I find so enjoyable. You hear other announcers that are so mono-toned that it's hard to get "up" about the game!), then I think the behaviour of the St. John's team was deplorable! Tim Spencer should have been thrown from the game as he was constantly trying to get into fights. And Keith Bombaugh wasn't a whole lot better. There seemed to be a "hit order" put on Cam Fergus, probably because they knew he was just coming off an injury. And it was probably lucky for JC Gauthier that he was too ill to play, as Thursday's game seemed to indicate that he was a marked target as well. These hits didn't seem to be the regular, good, solid, defensive hits. They sounded like they were meant to take players out for more than the one rush on net! The Eagles did well not to retaliate for the most part, although no one could condemn Robert Slaney (I believe that's who it was that was being harassed the whole way down the ice) for finally taking matters in his own hands - the referee wasn't about to do anything apparently!
At any rate, hopefully the boys will be able to get a flight out today, and can get home for at least a bit of rest before Monday's game against PEI. But I would say that this flu may take down a few more before it is done with the Eagles. Let's hope they can rise above it again, and get another win on Monday. GO EAGLES GO!
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