Montreal Canadiens Joël Teasdale advances to the Memorial Cup Final

The Memorial Cup Final has it’s match-up as Montreal Canadiens prospect Joël Teasdale and the Rouyn-Noranda Huskies beat Nick Suzuki and the Guelph Storm.

One door closed and a massive door opened at the 2019 Memorial Cup on Friday night. Joël Teasdale and Nick Suzuki have both been making the Montreal Canadiens proud up to this point, but with the Guelph Storm and Rouyn-Noranda Huskies having to meet in the semi-finals, only one could advance.

It was a wild game and the two teams combined for ten goals. The Storm were down two goals for the remaining eight minutes of the game when the Huskies were up 5-3 leaving plenty enough time to tie it up. However, when Guelph pulled the goalie, they only managed to pot in one before Rafaël Harvey-Pinard got the insurance marker for the team to end the game.

What will make the loss sting for the Storm is that they were leading in the first period.

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Alex Beaucage put the Huskies up 1-0 on the power play after Issac Ratcliffe was called for high-sticking. However, Ratcliffe righted that wrong quickly scoring two minutes later. Suzuki earned his first point of the game on that play helping with the offensive breakout by getting the puck to MacKenzie Entwistle who charged down on the two-on-one with Ratcliffe.

Exactly a minute later, Jack Hanley put Guelph in the lead with a long-seeing shot from the point. As good of a shot, there was a crazy amount of traffic in front of Samuel Harvey that did his part.

Then Teasdale scored his third of the tournament in an effort that the Montreal Canadiens would love to see on their roster in the next couple of seasons.

Sean Surzi of Guelph skated down into his own to grab the puck with Teasdale on his heels. Teasdale finished his check knowing the puck off of Durzi’s stick. Durzi scrambles with him and thinks he has it, but Teasdale steals the puck from him again putting himself in a position to score high on Anthony Popovich to tie the game.

That was it for scoring in that period but Guelph put themselves in the lead again in the second thanks to Cedric Ralph. After that, it was all Rouyn-Noranda.

The team scored three goals in a row (one in the second and two more in the third) leading up to a possible 5-3 decision. The Storm pulled the goalie, and Ratcliffe added one more goal for his team off a tic-tac-toe passing play starting with Suzuki. But that’s all they would be able to do before the final buzzer went off.

Suzuki ends his Memorial Cup performance with a two-point game finishing the tournament with three goals and four assists which for the time being is tied for first amongst players.

The Huskies now move on to have a rematch of the QMJHL President Cup Final against the Halifax Mooseheads. They may not have the crowd with them this time, but they’ve beaten them before, and they can do it again.