Q Round-up: Tigres continue to impress

The Victoriaville Tigres are still on fire.

The Tigres are still unbeaten, posting a 4-0-0-0 record thus far in the young Quebec Major Junior Hockey League season. They beat the Baie Comeau Drakkar 5-3 on Saturday night, and then defeated the Rouyn-Noranda Huskies on Sunday.

The Tigres were led by 19-year-old forwards Yannick Dube and Frederic Tanguay. Dube posted five points in his team’s two victories last week, and Tanguay had four.

Victoriaville hopes to continue their torrid pace, meeting up with the Quebec Remparts for a Friday night game this week.

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On a sombre note, the QMJHL lost two prospects in the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl plane crash on September 7.

Gennady Churilov and Sergei Ostapchuk were victims of the crash, in which 43 members of the team, including players and team staff, perished in a plane crash just after take-off in Russia.

Churilov, 24, played for the Quebec Remparts in the 2004-05 season, scoring 11 goals and 37 points in 69 games with the club. He then returned to Russia to play for Lokomotiv, where he played six seasons with the team. Churilov tallied a career-high 32 points with the team the last two seasons.

Ostapchuk, 21, was a two-year veteran with the Rouyn-Noranda Huskies during his QMJHL career. He was a point-a-game player in his two years, tallying 63 points in his rookie season in 2008-09, and another 37 points in 38 games in 2009-10. Ostapchuk returned to Lokomotiv, where he played during his minor hockey days, last season, where he had three points in 28 games.

The QMJHL’s clubs held a moment of silence in honour of the lives lost in the crash at each team’s home opening games this season.

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Two of the four teams that were ranked in the BMO CHL Mastercard Top 10 Rankings are struggling to open the season.

The Quebec Remparts and the Saint John Sea Dogs sit in 14^th and 16^th place in the QMJHL after the first week and a half of play. The Remparts have a 1-2-1-0 record, for three points, and the Sea Dogs have a 1-3-0-0 record, for two points. The Sea Dogs are tied for the worst record, with the Drummondville Voltigeurs and the Val-d’Or Foreurs.

The Sea Dogs are still missing a majority of their core to NHL camps, while the Remparts are taking longer than expected to mesh together. The Remparts have lost to the undefeated Tigres, the new Blainville-Boisbriand Armada, and the Chicoutimi Sagueneens in overtime.

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The Acadie-Bathurst Titan cooled down this weekend, but are still the highest scoring team in the QMJHL.

The team started off with a 3-0-0-0 record, then lost 5-4 on Friday in overtime to the Halifax Mooseheads, and lost 5-3 to the Cape Breton Screaming Eagles on Sunday.

The team has scored 26 goals, leading the league. They have been powered by their top line of league leading scorer Zach O’Brien, Matthew Bissonnette and Stephane Trudeau.

They play Val-d’Or on Tuesday at home, then travel to Saint John to play the Sea Dogs on Saturday. They return home on Sunday to play the Rouyn-Noranda Huskies.

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Moncton Wildcats coach and director of hockey operations Danny Flynn recorded his 150^th career win with the team in a 5-3 win over the P.E.I. Rocket on Thursday night at the Moncton Coliseum.

Flynn has been behind the bench for the team twice in their history, first joining with former coach Ted Nolan as an associate coach in 2005-06, and then returning to the bench solo in 2007-08.

In other Wildcat news, winger Sebastien Dyk has returned to Sweden.

Dyk (pronounced DOOK), 19, was the 32nd pick in the 2011 CHL Import Draft for Moncton, but fell into a numbers game with the team, who will go with Czech goalie Roman Will and their 20-year-old Slovak Marek Hrivik.

Dyk hadn’t seen game action in the regular season for the Wildcats, but had two points in three preseason games with the team. Last season, he split his time between the Swedish under-20 elite junior league and Sweden’s second division men’s league.

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Olivier Caouette is the latest QMJHL player to feel the long hand of the law. The Voltigeurs winger was suspended for two games Saturday for a hit to the head incident in the Drummondville-Rouyn-Noranda game on Friday.

Caouette’s suspension is the fifth one the QMJHL has handed down in the young season, and the seventh since play began in August. Caouette’s is the fourth such suspension for a hit to the head, which the league has been trying to crack down on.

Others who’ve been suspended for similar reasons include Val D’Or’s Guillaume Gelinas, Chicoutimi’s Napissis Andre and Shawinigan’s Pierre-Olivier Morin.

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Ten QMJHL players are in Montreal attending Canadiens’ training camp.

The ten players are Peter Delmas, Robin Gusse, Nathan Beaulieu, Olivier Dame-Malka, Morgan Ellis, Olivier Archambault, Michael Bournival, Etienne Brodeur, Louis Leblanc and Philippe Lefebvre.

Camp opened on Saturday in Brossard. Bournival was injured in his first scrimmage, and is listed as day-to-day.

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The top five scorers in the QMJHL are the same as last week, but have shifted spots. Titan RW Zach O’Brien is the king of the mountain, with 15 points in five games. He’s also tied for the league lead in goals with seven. His linemate, Matthew Bissonnette, is tied with Victoriaville’s Yanni Gourde for second, with 12 points. Gourde’s teammate, Philippe Maillet, is fourth with 11 points, including seven goals. The Titan’s Stephane Trudeau rounds out the top five with 11 points of his own.

Rounding out the top ten are Alex Saulnier of the Moncton Wildcats, rookie Nathan MacKinnon of the Halifax Mooseheads, Alex’s twin brother Allain, also of the Wildcats, Ben Duffy of the P.E.I. Rocket, and a whole slew of players with seven points, highlighted by Anton Zlobin of the Shawinigan Cataractes, who has a share of the league lead with seven goals.

Mikael Tam of the Quebec Remparts leads all defensemen in scoring with seven points. Moncton’s Patrick Downe is one point behind him. Nikita Kolesnikovs of Shawinigan and Mathieu Gagnon of the Gatineau Olympiques are tied with five points.

Nathan MacKinnon leads all rookies in points, four up on P.E.I.’s Matej Beran, who sits with six points. The Titan’s Chris Lalancette has five points to round out the top three.

Victoriaville rookie goaltender Brandon Whitney leads the QMJHL with four wins. Whitney, 17, currently sits in seventh place in the league with a GAA of 2.71, and a save percentage of .867.

Etienne Marcoux of the Blainville-Boisbriand Armada leads the circuit in GAA with a 1.32 mark in three games. He’s closely followed by Shawinigan’s Alex Dubeau, who’s sporting a GAA of 1.43. Dubeau also leads the league in save percentage, with a sparkling .952.