Thunder dominate the Lions

The Lions’ first game in 2024 was held Wednesday evening at Colisée Vidéotron against the Adirondack Thunder. The last time the two teams met the game was decided by a controversial Thunder overtime goal with doubts persisting as to whether the puck truly did cross the goal line. Revenge had to be on the Lions’ minds following that heartbreaker.

A scoreless first period produced 28 total shots, evenly split with 14 by the Lions and 14 by the Thunder. Two penalties were assessed in the period, the first going to the Lions’ John Parker-Jones for hooking at 10:24, and the second going to the Thunder’s Travis Broughman for tripping at 10:50.

The second period saw the Thunder completely dominate the Lions, registering four goals while Trois-Rivières was unable to muster a response. Three of Adirondack’s tallies came within two minutes of each other: The first goal was scored by Thunder captain Patrick Grasso at 4:50, followed by Tristan Ashbrook at 6:01, and then Broughman at 6:42. Grant Jozefek notched Adirondack’s fourth goal at 16:34.

At 2:21 of the third period the Lions’ Charles-Antoine Paiement got Trois-Rivières on the scoreboard with his first goal as a professional. But the Thunder weren’t about to stop the barrage, and Topias Vilén scored his first goal with the Thunder on the power play to make the score 5-1, and then with less than two minutes remaining in the game Yushiroh Hirano scored to give Adirondack a 6-1 victory.