Montreal Canadiens Rocket Fire: Vejdemo and Verbeek put on a show

The Laval Rocket are giving the Montreal Canadiens something to be proud of as they fought back to win their third straight game against Cleaveland.

There’s nothing better than a comeback victory. The Laval Rocket have had their fair share of games lost in the opening minutes giving up several goals to the point where it was a point of no return. Other times would see them go scoreless with a team until the third period and allow a couple of goals without being able to score any themselves. However, Thursday’s game pretty reminiscent of how the Montreal Canadiens operate, the Rocket were down, but they were not out.

It didn’t start out well. The Monsters scored two goals in the first five minutes of the game via Ryan Collins and Kole Sherwood. It’s not as if Laval were being outplayed drastically as the first period was fairly even.

Though Charlie Lindgren had two goals go past him in 38 seconds. Not the best recipe for a win.

The second period was when the Rocket turned the game in their favour. It began with Lukas Vejdemo scoring his ninth goal of the season. Tommy Cross and Alex Belzile both went off for slashing and hooking respectively putting the game in a 4-on-4 situation.

Vejdemo found an opportunity after catching the Monsters players closer to the defensive blueline. He then took off beating Jean-Francois Berube on the breakaway to get Laval on the scoreboard. Unfortunately, they couldn’t hold back Cleaveland from getting their two-goal lead as Paul Bittner scored three minutes later marking the end of Lindren’s night allowing three goals on ten shots.

Hayden Verbeek then decided to make the second period his. It was a pretty incredible effort as Verbeek cut in through four Monster players with speed. Then when it was just between himself and Berube, he made a fake lean to his right but put the puck top left to make it a 3-2 hockey game. The goal was almost a half Datsyukian deke with less speed, and if you don’t know what that is, here you go.

Cleaveland didn’t fully collapse (yet). Tommy Cross brought the two-goal lead back with his fourth of the season putting the Laval Rocket in the hole again. That was until Verbeek got his second of the night.

It was a prototypical greasy goal from the 21-year-old. Alex Kile took the initial shot which was stopped by Berube, but no one picked up Verbeek who pounced on the rebound. 4-3 hockey game.

The third period was all Laval. Vejdemo tied the game at four after Karl Alzner’s shot was initially blocked. The 2015 third-round pick fought off the two defending players and scored on his backhand to tie the game up at four.

Then Jake Evans chose to end his point slump. Adam Glendenning was called for delay of game in the second half of the third period. Belzile skated down the right wall with the puck and found Evans free in the slot. Evans fired the puck past Berube for his first goal in 13 games and 11th of the season.

Laval fought the remaining time on the clock, and they won their third straight game. It was a good performance by the team as a whole save for Xavier Ouellet who left his goaltender out to dry on some plays.

Players would need to step up with the departure of some of its players, and that was done fairly well. Now it’s on to the second half.