Rocket strike first, Laval beats Toronto 3-1 in Game 1

The Laval Rocket seized the first game of the North Division semifinals with a 3-1 win over the Toronto Marlies at Place Bell, using a clean, balanced effort to put the series in Laval’s hands before it ever left Quebec.

Florian Xhekaj gave Laval the opening punch in the first period, jumping a puck off Michael Pezzetta’s stick and finishing from the slot past Dennis Hildeby. It was the kind of early strike that let the Rocket dictate tempo, defend with a lead and force Toronto into a long night of trying to manufacture offense against a team that did not give much away.

Laval added separation in the third period after Sean Farrell created another Toronto turnover and slipped the puck to Joshua Roy, who buried his fifth career playoff goal to make it 2-0. That goal mattered as much for how it came as for the number on the board: Toronto’s mistakes were not being punished by chance, but by a Laval group that kept turning loose pucks into dangerous chances.

Toronto finally broke through late, but even that goal came with a dose of misfortune. Luke Haymes fired a shot that hit Kaapo Kähkönen, deflected off Cédric Paré in front and bounced into the net. By then, the Marlies had already burned too much time and too many opportunities to shift the game back in their favor.

Samuel Blais closed it out with 1:27 left, stealing the puck at the Toronto blue line and sliding an empty-netter home to complete the 3-1 result. Kähkönen finished with 20 saves for Laval, while Hildeby stopped 23 of 25 shots in defeat.

The opener carried extra weight because these teams had not met in postseason play since 2001, and because Toronto arrived with momentum from a hard-fought three-game win over Rochester. Laval had the fresher legs after a first-round bye, and it showed in the way the Rocket managed the game from the first goal to the last. Toronto had won five of eight regular-season meetings, but Game 1 suggested the playoff version of this matchup tilts differently when Laval gets the first clean break and keeps the mistakes on the Marlies’ side of the ice.