While there won’t be an All-Star Game in the NHL this season because of the Olympics break, and there wasn’t one last year because of the 4 Nations Face-Off, the traditional game still takes place in the AHL, and the Montreal Canadiens farm team, the Laval Rocket, will be well represented.
Laval will have three players on the ice and a coach behind the bench. Pascal Vincent will be one of the four bench bosses on duty, while Jacob Fowler, Adam Engstrom, and Laurent Dauphin will be playing.
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The All-Star Classic will take place on February 10 and 11 in Rockford, Illinois, and if one could have wondered if Fowler would be making it since he’s currently in the NHL, there’s no doubt this year because the NHL will be put on hold from February 5th for the Olympics. Given how little action the 21-year-old has seen with the goalie carousel in Montreal, there is no doubt that he will be back in Laval for the break, which will allow him to see as much action as possible.
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In 15 games with the Rocket this season, the netminder has a 10-5-0 record, three shutouts, with a 2.09 GAA and a .919 save percentage. The masked man’s performance was so good that when goaltending wasn’t up to par in the NHL, the Habs brass did not hesitate to call upon him even though the initial plan, as admitted by GM Kent Hughes, was to keep him in the AHL for the season.
As for defenseman Adam Engstrom, he has 20 points in 23 games with 10 penalty minutes and a plus-10 rating with the Rocket this season. Despite being called up by the Canadiens for 11 games, he’s the 10th-highest-scoring defenseman in the AHL, and he leads all Rocket blueliners. William Trudeau is second amongst the farm team’s blueliners with 13 points in 27 games, followed by Marc Del Gaizo with 12 points in 27 games and prospect David Reinbacher, who also has 12 points, but in 28 games.
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As for Laurent Dauphin, he is second in scoring in the league with 40 points in 32 games, second only to the Belleville Senators’ Arthur Kaliyev, who has 42 points but in 37 games. Furthermore, Dauphin has a plus-22 rating, while Kaliyev’s is minus-7. At 30 years old, the centerman has accepted the fact that his NHL dream won’t come true when he came back to the Canadiens’ organization on an AHL contract, after trying his luck with the defunct Arizona Coyotes’ organization and in Switzerland.
Finally, Vincent has the Rocket atop the North Division with a 22-12-1-1 record, good for 46 points in 36 games, four points ahead of the Rochester Americans. This is quite a feat, given how many of his players have been called up by the Habs. He had to make do without Engstrom, Fowler, Owen Beck, Florian Xhekaj, Jared Davidson, and Joshua Roy at times. The bench boss and his coaching staff have been praised by Martin St-Louis a few times for how ready the players he has called up are to perform in the NHL. Vincent has been an excellent hire for the organization. Last season, he got the Rocket to the Conference Final and will no doubt be aiming to top that this time around.
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