Lions fall to Admirals 4-3

Wednesday marked the fourth time this season that the Lions and the Norfolk Admirals faced off against one another. The Lions travelled south to play the Admirals a few weeks ago, with Trois-Rivières winning one of the teams’ three head-to-heads. Of note Wednesday night was the return of Thomas Caron to Colisée Vidéotron after having played with the Lions last year. Starting in nets for the Lions was Zachary Bouthillier, who registered his first professional shutout last week against the Reading Royals. Norfolk opted to go with Thomas Milic in goal.

The Admirals got on the scoreboard early in the first period when Caron found the back of the Lions’ net. It was his fourth goal of the season, with assists going to Montreal native Darick Louis-Jean and Justin Young. A few minutes later it was Justin Robidas giving the Admirals a 2-0 lead. However, at 14:10 of the period the Lions’ William Lemay narrowed the gap with his first goal of the season with help from Nicolas Larivière and Christopher Ortiz.

That goal as the first period was drawing to a close gave the Lions a spark that had been missing the past few games. The second period saw Trois-Rivières’ Anthony Beauregard levelling the game at 2-2 after 4:33 of play. The Admirals responded in kind at the 11:45 mark to regain their lead when Mark Liwiski beat Bouthillier. Not to be outdone, under two minutes later the Lions’ John Parker-Jones scored his first goal of the season off a slap shot from the face-off circle, and the teams headed to their respective locker rooms after 40 minutes of play tied 3-3.

It was an edge-of-your-seat third period as both teams had several quality scoring opportunities. But only the Admirals were able to hit paydirt when Josh McDougall scored his first of the season at 16:04. The Lions mounted a desperate comeback but it didn’t produce the necessary equalizing goal, and the Admirals emerged victorious with a 4-3 victory to take the first game of the teams’ three-game series.