Laval Rocket: An area of the team that needs to improve

The Laval Rocket have struggled with discipline and killing penalties this season and yesterday’s loss to the Syracuse Crunch was just another example of it.

Special teams make or break a team’s season. There have been too many times where the Laval Rocket would be in a decent position in a game, and then get caught in penalty trouble. It’s deflating to continue losing players to the sin bin, but it should be alright as long as you have a strong penalty kill. Unfortunately, the Rocket does not.

Let’s take Wednesday’s game against Syracuse as an example. Laval got the lead late in the first off the man advantage thanks to Nikita Scherbak after Erik Cernak took the Crunch’s third penalty of the period. Dennis Yan tied things up in the first half of the second though while Anthony Cirelli and Mitchell Stephens converted on Syracuse’s power-play opportunities.

By the end of the game, the Rocket took a total of ten minor penalties. At the same time, they were only able to convert on one of their nine man-advantage chances. The team now has the league’s worst penalty kill at 76.7% and has allowed the most goals shorthanded (48).

It’s an understatement to say that this is a problem. It goes back to another area that Laval has struggled with this season in awareness and overall team defence. As they were down by two goals, the team let their emotions get the best of them and put themselves in additional situations to try to focus on defending instead of cutting into the lead.