An important opportunity to help their playoff position got away from the Halifax Mooseheads on the road on Sunday.
They dropped an 8-3 decision to the Gatineau Olympiques, who are one of two teams chasing the Mooseheads for a chance to play in the post-season. The 17th-place Olympiques are now just two points behind the Mooseheads and the Victoriaville Tigres in the race at the bottom. Only two teams in the 18-team league miss the playoffs and the Bathurst Titan are last overall.
The game never really had a winning feel for the Mooseheads, who fell behind 3-0 in the first period and weren't ever able to cut the deficit to any more than two goals the rest of the way. The win improves the Olympiques' record to 9-1 since the Christmas break.
Zach Dean scored a hat trick for the Olympiques and Pier-Olivier Roy, Mathieu Bizier, Kieran Craig, Brendan Tomilson Manix Landry and Jeremy Rainville had one goal each. Marcel Barinka found the net for the third straight game for the Mooseheads and Kevin Gursoy also scored.
Remi Poirier stopped 24 shots for Gatineau and Cole McLaren made 25 saves for Halifax.
The Mooseheads come home from their three-game trip to Quebec with two points. They beat the Tigres 2-1 on Friday, then lost 4-2 to the first-place Sherbrooke Phoenix on Saturday.
Samuel Poulin, Nathael Roy, Taro Jenzsch and Alex-Olivier Voyer had the goals for the Phoenix and Barinka and D'Artagnan Joly were the scorers for the Mooseheads.
Alexis Gravel stopped 43 shots in an excellent showing for Halifax and Samuel Hlavaj made 23 saves for Sherbrooke.
"Gravy played unbelievable," Daigneault said. "I'm very happy with the way he's playing. He gave us a big game in Victo and (Saturday) he gave us a chance to win. That's what I addressed between periods with the players. We weren't playing the right way and I said 'Listen, he's giving us a game and he's ready to play, why don't we play smart in front of him instead of having the best team in the league pepper him with shots.'
"There's obviously a lot for us to learn and I can find excuses and say 'We have a young team, we lost a lot of players' but I don't want to go that route. I'd rather keep teaching and with that the guys will get better because we'll have that effort level behind it."
The Mooseheads (17-23-2-1) and Olympiques (16-24-3-0) meet again at the Scotiabank Centre on Thursday.
Justin Barron, Sonny Kabatay, Said Abi-Faycal, Keegan Hunt and Landon Miron did not dress for Halifax against Gatineau.
Eagles 8, Islanders 2: In Charlottetown on Saturday, Liam Kidney had two goals and an assist and recently acquired forwards Shawn Element (one goal, one assist) and Tyler Hinam (three assists) helped set the pace for the Cape Breton offence.
Felix Lafrance, Egor Sokolov and Jarrett Baker also scored for the Eagles and William Trudeau and Justin Gill were the Islanders scorers.
Kevin Mandolese made 34 saves for Cape Breton and Jacob Goobie and Matthew Welsh combined to make 26 stops for Charlottetown.
The Eagles are now tied with the Rimouski Oceanic for fourth place overall with a 26-14-2-1 record.
