Another big road win for the Wildcats, 8-4 over Chicoutimi.
Chicoutimi isn't a bad team (average), and anytime you can score eight goals in somebody else's barn, that's pretty special.
We used Charles-Antoine Lavallée (our 16 year old back-up goalie) in the game. No offence to him (he's doing pretty good for a rookie), but if Felix LeClerc had been in goal, I betcha the score would have been more like 8-2.
The trade period is coming up, and big decisions will have to be made. Will Irving decide to go "all in" and take a run for the cup this year, or will he wait for next year. Our 19 year olds are McKenna, Seitz, Capannelii, Cyr, Aspirot and Le Coultre. These are amongst our heavy hitters and we will lose some of them next year as we can only have three 20 year olds on the roster. Also, we won't have LeClerc next year (he is a 20 year old).
I'm sure Irving will be tempted to go for it this year, but will the penalty be too high? There certainly would be a price to pay in terms of draft picks, prospects and some of our younger players in development. Our current team also has chemistry. Will we lose this if we move too many of our players around?
If we stand pat, we could still have McKenna, Cyr & Aspirot as our 20 year olds next year, and still have proven performers like Pelletier, Khovanov, McDonald, Spence and Hudson in the line-up. That's pretty powerful, and if we wanted to buy, I'm sure the Bathurst first round pick that we own would likely be the price. I'm not sure I want to give that up.
The only question mark for the team next year as far as I'm concerned would be goaltending. Lavallee still would only be 17 years old and probably not quite ready for prime time. If we could stabilize our goaltending situation for the long term, I would be tempted to hold tight.......