Previewing The Laval Rocket’s Weekend Games

The Rocket announced that Jacob Fowler will be making his 8th consecutive start on Friday, as he had to play back-to-back games in previous weeks due to a Kaapo Kahkonen injury. However, Kahkonen is said to be healthy, according to Rocket Head Coach Pascal Vincent, who said earlier this week that all his players are healthy and should be able to play this weekend. Therefore, we should expect Kahkonen to start Saturday’s game against the Marlies to take some much-needed pressure off Fowler. In reality, Fowler has played so much lately that he sat out the AHL All-Star events to rest a minor injury ahead of tonight’s game. It will be interesting to see how he plays tonight, as a shaky night could be the result of being overplayed or the injury still nagging him.

The positive news for both goalies’ statuses is that the Rocket sent down Hunter Jones back to the Trois-Rivières Lions of the ECHL earlier this morning, which is a sign that both netminders should be able to get a game each this weekend. Given that Fowler has helped the Rocket win 5 straight matchups and that he’s had rest, they likely want to ride his momentum into tonight’s game to give him a chance to extend both the team’s and his own personal winning streak to 6 straight games.

On top of the news that Fowler will be getting the start against the Bears, the Rocket also announced that both defenseman Tobie Paquette-Bisson and forward Jared Davidson will be returning to the lineup as well. This means that they will be getting a solid veteran defenseman and a solid scorer back as reinforcements for tonight’s game. Paquette-Bisson has missed the last 13 games since January 10th, when he went down with an injury. As for Davidson, he has missed the last 4 games before the All-Star break. The return of Davidson should be a nice boost to an offence that was also doing really well in the games without him.

After winning the first meeting of the season between these two teams in a 4-3 victory at the end of November, the Rocket will be looking to go for the sweep against the Bears tonight. Given the Bears’ recent struggles, the Rocket should be in good shape to do so, but sometimes coming off an All-Star break leads to even the best teams needing to shake off rust. However, either way, the Rocket will be seen as big favourites against the Bears. They will also be looking to extend their lead as 1st place in the North Division in the process during both tonight’s and Saturday’s games against the Marlies.

If you are unable to watch either Rocket game on RDS this weekend but have the chance to listen, head to our website and check out the official audio broadcast with Vincent Demuy and Cedric Blondin by clicking here.