No one ever complains about a textbook road win.
The Halifax Mooseheads travelled to Bathurst on Thursday and returned with two points after a clinical 6-3 victory over the Titan.
"The guys played the right way tonight," said Halifax head coach J.J. Daigneault. "There were some things before the game that we wanted to address, which was getting more pucks to the net and driving the net too. We lacked that the last couple of games where we got outshot, so our shot quality as well as us just getting to the top of the paint was huge.
"We did that tonight and it paid off. (Cole) Stewart scored a goal just going to the net and putting a rebound in. And the guys also played hard. We tried to exploit their defencemen and put pucks behind them, which we did. A lot of good things came out of that game."
The Mooseheads also hit all the other basic key points needed in a winning road formula - they scored first, extended their lead in the middle of the game and then put it away with more good two-way play in the third. They also got steady defence and goaltending to tick off the rest of the boxes.
"It was a good game all around," Daigneault said. "(Alexis Gravel) made some big saves when the game was 1-1 and we played a good offensive game. That was one thing that we talked about this week. I don't like where we sit offensively in the Quebec junior league. I think we were 13th (before the game) with (72) goals for, so one thing I wanted the guys to get better at was the shot quality and we did that.
"Our defensive play has been pretty good ... because we defend as a unit of five. But oftentimes when we're attacking we have some independent contractors who do it solo. We're not using everyone on the ice so we tried to get them to attack as a five-man unit tonight and we did that."
The Mooseheads' big line of Maxim Trepanier (two goals, two assists), Bo Groulx (one goal, two assists) and Raphael Lavoie (one goal, two assists) carried the offence once again, while Jason Horvath also had a goal and two assists. Trepanier and Groulx also extended their points streaks to 11 and 10 games, respectively.
Shawn Element, Noah Delemont and Remy Anglehart scored for the Titan. Gravel made 26 saves for Halifax and Tristan Berube stopped 34 shots for Bathurst.
"Even at the end with about 10 seconds left guys were blocking shots," Daigneault said. "Gavin Hart was blocking shots late and I was really happy with the work our fourth line did tonight. They played quite a bit and they played well. The guys didn't take a shift off. They really fought until the end."
The Mooseheads (12-11-2-1) play their next game at home on Saturday against the Blainville-Boisbriand Armada.
Marcel Barinka, Samuel Dube, Jared McIsaac and Lucas Robinson did not play for Halifax.
