You don’t often see 24 different penalties handed out in a game. Even at Gatineau’s famed Robert Guertin Centre, home to the Olympiques, deafening noise, and raining beers, there’s seldom 56 penalty minutes given out.
But on the last day of the regular season, with the CHL’s top team in Gatineau to play the QMJHL’s third best team, the scene was set for anger -- even in an arena where boiling is the base temperature. As Gatineau sat out its captain (Nashville Predators prospect Alexandre Carrier) and its leading scorer (top 2016 NHL Draft prospect Vitalii Abramov), new faces populated the lineup without names on their jerseys and anything to lose.