Gatineau Wins President’s Cup

Last Friday night, the Gatineau Olympiques won their seventh President’s Cup title with a decisive 7-3 win over the Rouyn-Noranda Huskies taking the series in five games. Forward Matthew Pistilli was the big scorer on the night as he netted a hat trick, while forward Claude Giroux received the Guy Lafleur Trophy awarded to the playoff MVP. Over the course of the playoffs, he amassed 51 points for a new single season franchise record. That was a record that stood for 20 years as Marc Saumier set the record with 48 in 1988.

Giroux sits in third place overall among playoff scorers with 24 goals and 53 assists in 41 games played from 2006-08. He sits behind Martin Menard, who scored 31 goals and 56 assists in 53 games from 1995-97 and Pittsburgh Penguins center Maxime Talbot, who netted 30 goals and assisted on 52 others over a 52 game period from 2001-04.

The win also gave goalie Ryan Mior a 16-2-0 record and the record for most games in the net with 270 from 2003-08 with Gatineau and the PEI Rocket. Gatineau now advances to the Memorial Cup in Kitchener and will play their first game on Friday night when they face the host team and OHL champions, the Kitchener Rangers, in the tournament opener.

In games earlier in the week when the series resumed on Tuesday, Giroux’s two goals and two assists gave Gatineau a 10-4 win to take a 2-1 series lead, while Paul Byron added a goal and two assists in the 4-1 Olympiques win on Wednesday.

The Leaders

Not surprisingly, the top three scorers are from the Olympiques with Giroux (17G, 34A, 51P) taking the top spot, center Paul Byron (21G, 11A, 32P) coming second, and Pistilli (11G, 17A, 28P) rounding out the top three.

Between the pipes based on a minimum of 15 games played, Mior is tops with his 16-2-0 record, 2.56 GAA, and 0.904 SV% followed by Halifax’s Mark Yetman (8-7, 2.61 GAA, 0.913 SV%), and Rouyn-Noranda’s Maxim Gougeon who has won 13 games to go along with four losses, has a goals against average of 3.05, and a 0.901 SV%.

Memorial Cup

Three games will kick off the start of the Memorial Cup this coming weekend. In addition to the Gatineau-Kitchener game on Friday, OHL runners up the Belleville Bulls will face the WHL’s Spokane Chiefs on Saturday, while Kitchener will take on Spokane on Sunday. As Kitchener is the host team, the Bulls will represent the OHL.