Islanders drop Mooseheads 7-1 in Charlottetown

A rough second period did the Halifax Mooseheads in Friday night in Charlottetown.
The host Islanders scored four times in an 11-minute span to blow open a 1-1 tie on their way to a 7-1 win in front of 1,007 fans at the Eastlink Centre.
"I don't think we started that bad but we didn't play a disciplined game," said Mooseheads head coach J.J. Daigneault. "When I say disciplined, it's not just some penalties that we took but the way we played within our system, players' shifts and things like that.
"And right now we're playing short too. We played three lines last night, three lines in Cape Breton (on Saturday) and we have five 16-year-olds in the lineup. Charlottetown is a good hockey club with a lot of vets so that's a lot of resistance for the young kids."
It was the second straight loss for the Mooseheads, although the first one was in overtime so they did get a point for that result. But like the Thursday OT defeat against the Moncton Wildcats, a handful of lapses in concentration at inopportune times made the difference.
"I told the players after the second period 'Guys, it's a tough league for a young team," Daigneault said. "But the fact we're young is not an excuse at all.' We'll never use that as an excuse. We want to get better and we have to play with pride and we have to be disciplined.
"We're growing together and obviously we would like to avoid these types of games as much as possible and we would like to be in games as much as possible. But right we just played our 10th game of the season so I think it's a good time to reassess and have meetings with players to see how they're doing. We want to see how they're learning and talk about what more they can give us."
It also didn't help that Charlottetown's Jacob Goobie was on his game. The second-year goalie from Upper Tantallon made a number of pivotal saves that robbed the Mooseheads of goals that could've swung the momentum.
Goobie finished with 26 saves and Cole McLaren and Brady James combined to stop 35 shots for Halifax. James replaced McLaren after Charlottetown made it 7-1 in the third period.
"(Goobie) played well but I also don't think he was tested all that much," Daigneault said. "That was something I brought up to our team after the second period. If we're only going to shoot seven times a period, that's not going to cut it. That was something we changed in the third period and a lot of times that shot turned into a rebound or a secondary shot, so we got some chances that way."
Thomas Casey scored twice for the Islanders and Justin Gill, Cedric Desruisseaux, Drew Elliott, William Trudeau and Sam Oliver had one each. Landon Miron was the Mooseheads scorer.
The Mooseheads' (3-5-2-0) next game is a rematch with the Islanders (7-1-0-0) at the Scotiabank Centre on Friday.
Eagles 5, Sea Dogs 4 (OT): In Saint John, Shawn Element scored 78 seconds into overtime to give Cape Breton the win.
Ryan Francis, with two, Liam Kidney and Jean-Francois Buteau also scored for the Eagles and rookie goalie Nicolas Ruccia turned aside 24 shots. Charles Savoie, Cam MacDonald, William Villeneauve and Joshua Roy had the goals for Saint John and Noah Patenaude made 32 saves.
Notes: Alexandre David, Alexis Gravel and Cole Foston did not dress for Halifax. ... The Mooseheads recalled Gavin Hart and Braeden MacPhee for the game. ... The Rimouski Oceanic, Baie-Comeau Drakkar, Rouyn-Noranda Huskies and Val-d'Or Foreurs resumed their seasons on Friday after a two-week hiatus because of a COVID-19 flare-up in Quebec.