When he met with reporters the day after the Montreal Canadiens’ management decided to trade him to the Laval Rocket earlier this week, defenseman Logan Mailloux said he was going to focus on the opening weekend of the American Hockey League season. Friday night in Providence, he delivered the goods in style.

Mailloux had the best game of his career in a Rocket uniform with four points, including two goals, in a 5-2 victory over the Bruins.

The young defender was the architect of a five-goal surge without response from the Laval team starting in the middle of the first twenty when he participated in Adam Engström’s goal.

He added the eventual winning goal midway through the second period, and scored the game’s final goal in the third period.

Before breaking out against the Bruins, Mailloux had delivered his best performance in the American League on February 10, 2024 against the Marlies in Toronto, with a goal and two assists.

Did he know he had achieved a career high? Maybe not. But that doesn’t matter, because that’s not what mattered to him.

“It feels good, for sure. It feels good to win, too,” Mailloux replied after his evening of work.

Like Mailloux, head coach Pascal Vincent would have had good reason to celebrate an individual feat, as he began his career behind the Rocket bench with a triumph.

But just like Mailloux, Vincent also focused mainly on the collective.

“For sure the win is satisfying. But beyond that, it’s how we won. The process was good from start to finish, the effort was there, the guys played for each other. Obviously, we love the result, but until the last shift, we played the right way.”

Filip Mesar, with a goal and two assists, and Lucas Condotta — the new Rocket captain — with two assists, also had strong games.

William Trudeau was the other scorer for the Rocket, who largely dominated this game, as demonstrated by his 39 shots on Brandon Bussi, or 13 per period, against only 14 for the Bruins on Jakub Dobes.

Vinni Lettieri and Patrick Brown scored for the Bruins.

Poor start
It cannot be said that the Rocket started the match in the best possible way.

Not even three minutes into the game, the Rocket found themselves shorthanded when defenseman Chris Jandric was caught holding.

Just 12 seconds later, at 3:06 and on the first puck aimed at him this season, Dobes gave up on Lettieri’s shot.

Despite the goal, the Rockets managed to dictate the tempo of the game, except that it was the Bruins who scored the next goal, from Brown, with a shot from a very tight angle that Dobes might have liked to see again, at 10:36.

“They scored on the power play and they had that goal where the shot found an opening, but I thought we played well five-on-five. We continued to work and we looked forward to each of our presences on the ice,” noted Mailloux.

The Rocket got back into the game less than three minutes later through Engstrom, who completed a play by Condotta and Mailloux.

Pascal Vincent’s men took advantage of a penalty on Lettieri to tie the game thanks to Mesar’s goal at 7:32 of the second period before Mailloux added his third point of the game, and his first goal of the season, about six minutes later.

“At 0-2, there was no panic because we had the upper hand, we weren’t giving much away,” Vincent noted.

“We felt it, there was this confidence on the bench that we could come back. Yes, we were losing 2-0, but at the same time, we felt in control of the game. It was just a matter of time. The way the team played tonight (Friday), it was impossible for us to lose,” added the Rocket head coach.

Trudeau doubled the visitors’ lead at 2:36 of the third period.

The Rocket defenseman completed a deep drive into the opposing zone by going around the net and beating Bussi to put the puck behind the Bruins goalie.

Mailloux added the cherry on top with his second goal of the game, a beautiful play in which he beat two opponents before putting a backhand shot into the top of the net with just under seven minutes left in the third period.

The Rocket will complete this short two-game road trip tomorrow night in Springfield, against the Thunderbirds.