Rocket: The Laval Rocket Are More Popular Than The Buffalo Sabres

The Laval Rocket celebrated their home opener this past Friday and needless to say, they went out with a bang.

A sold out crowd of 10,062 were on hand at Place Bell to watch their team beat the Belleville Senators 6-2. Twitter was filled with pictures and videos of the event. Cayden Primeau stopped 17 of 19 stops backstopping his team to their first win of the season. Michael Pezzetta, Lukas Vejdemo, Danick Martel, Jean-Sebastien Dea, Jean-Christophe Beaudin and Ryan Poehling scored for the Rocket.

What made this game even more special, aside from the obvious that fans weren’t allowed in the arena for what seems like a century, was the capacity crowd at hand.

Only about 8000 people attended Buffalo’s home opener versus Laval’s 10,000! To make matters worse, the Trois-Rivières Lions have quickly sold out their brand new 4390 seat Colisée Vidéotron for their inaugural home opener. That’s nearly 36,000 people attending three levels of professional hockey in a 140 kilometer radius. We could be forgiving if there was a massive snowstorm or if a huge event was happening. Nope. The Sabres, who haven’t made the playoffs in a decade, are just not drawing. With the whole Jack Eichel saga and the team in a full rebuild, there’s simply nothing to get excited about in Buffalo. Unless you’re a Bills fan.

Back to the Rocket.

The following evening wasn’t as joyous as the Rocket drove down the 401 to Belleville for a second game in two nights against the same Senators. This time, Belleville got their revenge by crushing the Rocket 5-2. Ryan Poehling unfortunately went down with an injury. Despite only giving one powerplay goal, the rocket took six penalties throughout the game, completely throwing off their momentum.

Michael McNiven started the game and was pulled midway through the second period after giving up four goals. Cayden Primeau played the rest of the game giving up one tally.

The AHL schedule is mostly built on home/away contests and back-to-back games for that matter. So the duo of Primeau and McNiven will need to be sharp all year if they want to help this high octane Rocket squad. Head coach Jean-Francois Houle has encouraged a highly offensive game built on speed and creativity, so we’re going to see a lot of high scoring games throughout what should be a very exciting season. RDS will be showing over half of their games on TV while every game is available for streaming on AHLTV. 91.9 FM in Montreal will air every game on the radio in French while TSN 690 AM committing to nearly half the games in English.

For a fraction of the price you would pay at the Bell Center, you can bring the whole family for an affordable good time at Place Bell as well. Tickets start as low as $19 and having been there multiple times myself for both hockey and concerts, I can assure you the view is great everywhere.

The Rocket return home for their next game on Wednesday, October 20th as they face the Manitoba Moose, affiliate to the Winnipeg Jets.