Entering the season, the Rimouski Océanic and Memorial Cup host Québec Remparts were expected to win the league and both remain favourites after strong regular seasons. With a pair of wins over the Remparts to close out the season, the Océanic finished tops in the Q with 99 points. They’ll face 16th-place Victoriaville to open the playoffs.
Moncton won the Maritimes Division and finished second with 95 points. The Cats will face off against Chicoutimi. For the fourth time in the past five seasons, the Blainville-Boisbriand Armada finished on top of the West Division (this includes when the Armada were the Montréal Juniors). A model of consistency, the Armada will face the red-hot Gatineau Olympiques in the first round. Rounding out the playoffs, Québec (4) will play Cape Breton (13), Shawinigan (5) squares off against Halifax (12), Val-d’Or (6) plays Rouyn-Noranda (11), Baie-Comeau (7) meets Saint John (10) and Sherbrooke (8) hosts Charlottetown (9).
Wildcats winger Conor Garland won the scoring race with 129 points, tying Dylan Strome of the OHL’s Erie Otters for the CHL lead. Baie-Comeau centre Maxime St-Cyr was the only player to break the 50-goal barrier with 54. The rookie scoring race was won by Dmytro Timashov who posted 90 points on the strength of 71 helpers. Charlottetown’s Filip Chlapik and Shawinigan’s Dennis Yan led all rookies with 33 goals. With a pair of assists on Saturday, Nikolas Brouillard of the Remparts became the top scoring defenceman with 57 points.
Maritimes Division
Entering the season, the Maritimes Division was up for grabs. The Halifax Mooseheads were expected to take a step back after two deep playoff runs, including a Memorial Cup win in 2013. That opened the door for the Moncton Wildcats, who jumped into the division lead early in the season and never looked back.
The Cats finished second overall with 95 points and led the league with 287 goals. St. Louis Blues prospect Ivan Barbashev potted 45 goals and finished with 95 points to create a dynamic dup with. Goaltender Alex Dubeau finished the weekend with a shutout, his fourth of the season, posting 27 saves in a 3-0 win over the Mooseheads on Friday. Dubeau was given a rest for the final two games of the season, while the team’s top stars sat out the season finale on Sunday.
The regular season was supposed to end Saturday with all 18 teams in action, but a snowstorm in Halifax pushed Wednesday’s matchup against Moncton to Sunday. The game was meaningless for the Wildcats as their first-round playoff matchup with Chicoutimi was set in stone. However, playoff matchups for six other teams depended on the result. The Mooseheads picked up a pair of points in a 5-2 win, leap-frogging Gatineau and Cape Breton to finish in 12th place. Mooseheads goalie Kevin Resop achieved the rare feat of picking up three assists, one of only three goalies to ever do so and the first since 1989.
The Acadie-Bathurst Titan had last place locked up weeks ago but thrived as spoilers down the stretch. In a pair of road games against the Cape Breton Screaming Eagles, the Titan picked up three important points. More importantly, they held Cape Breton to two points—an overtime win after a third period comeback—and prevented the Screaming Eagles from climbing up in the standings. Mark Simpson missed the final pair of games, but finished the season as the Titan’s top scorer with 45 points in 54 games.
East Division
The Rouyn-Noranda Huskies finished the regular season in 11th place and only lost three of their last 10 games in regulation. In February, their playoff position was cast in doubt as they went on a five-game losing streak and were sinking in the standings. A pair of seventh-round picks from the 2014 NHL draft, Francis Perron (Ottawa Senators, 190th) and Julien Nantel (Colorado Avalanche, 204th), have provided consistent scoring down the stretch during the Huskies’ rebound. Perron finished the season with a pair of goals in a 7-3 win over the Sherbrooke Phoenix.
Blainville-Boisbriand Armada defenceman Nathanael Halbert, born in Nottingham, England, led his band of merry men to victory when he tied the game late in the third period then scored in overtime. His two goals in the 3-2 win were his fourth and fifth of the season. Halbert, who grew up in Richmond Hill, Ont., signed with the Armada in the summer of 2013 after going unselected in the OHL draft.
West Division
The final weekend of the season featured a showdown between the Rimouski Océanic and Québec Remparts, the pre-season favourites to win the league. The Océanic won both games, 4-3 on Friday and 5-4 on Saturday, and finished on top of the overall standings with 99 points. Québec goalie Zach Fucale was pulled Friday night after allowing four goals on 17 shots. Fucale’s March numbers were sub-par: he won one game and lost three and had a lowly .890 save percentage with a 3.31 goals-against average. The Remparts struggled against the Océanic all season with five losses in eight games.
The Victoriaville Tigres picked a bad time to go ice-cold, finishing the last 10 games of the regular season with only two regulation wins. Drummondville, one of two teams to not make the playoffs, hammered the Tigres 8-5 to close out the season. Victoriaville finished the year a respectable seventh in goal scoring with 248, but allowed the most goals with 275. The Tigres have a playoff date with first place Rimouski.
Three Stars
Philippe Desrosiers, G, Rimouski Océanic Philippe Desrosiers was between the pipes as the Océanic closed out the last week of the season with three wins, enough to clinch first place in the league. Desrosiers started the week off with a 24-save shutout over Shawinigan on Wednesday night. He played back-to-back games on Friday and Saturday, both wins over the rival Remparts. Desrosiers only lost one of his seven starts in March.
Ross Johnston, LW, Charlottetown Islanders The alternate captain led his team to a pair of wins during the last weekend of the season, scoring three goals and adding three assists. Johnston netted a pair of goals against Moncton—the team that drafted him in 2011—on Saturday and was named the game’s first star. The night before, he tied the game on the power play with less than a minute to go and was named the second star of the game.
Valentin Zykov, RW, Gatineau Olympiques The Olympiques picked up a pair of wins to close out the regular season, led by Zykov. In a 4-1 win Saturday, the Russian scored a pair of goals. The night before he had an assist. Zykov was brought in over the trade period and has developed into the team’s most dangerous player down the stretch.