Despite guiding his rookie laden Quebec Midget AAA Hockey League club to a strong start in September, Lac St. Louis Lions head coach Danny Dupont knew things could change quickly.

A little over eight weeks later, things have. The Dollard des Ormeaux-based Lions, a young team featuring only one returning veteran from last year’s squad in Philippe Saviuk spliced with a slew of players who made the jump from bantam AA and several graduating midget espoir players have levelled off. Instead of winning the majority of their games as they did in early September, the Lions have been playing around .500 hockey, which is not necessarily such a bad thing, considering many knowledgeable league observers expected the team, which featured four graduating bantam AA defenceman, to struggle.

Heading into this weekend’s Telus Challenge Tournament at the Jacques Lemaire Arena in LaSalle, a four-day event featuring every team in the league designed to be competitive and prestigious but whose hidden agenda is to showcase talent for Quebec Major Junior Hockey League and United States prep school scouts, the Lions currently sit in sixth place in the CCM Division with a respectable 12-10-1-1 record, good enough for sixth place, one point behind St. Eustache.

The Lions, who kick things off tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. with a match against St. Eustache, head into the tourney off what has to be described as an encouraging weekend. On Saturday night at the Dollard Civic Centre, they showed they could stand toe-to-toe with the big boys, earning an important point while losing 5-4 in a shootout to a very strong Gatineau Intrépide squad. It currently sits in first place in the CCM Division and the league with 40 points. The Lions led 4-3 heading into the late stages of the third period in the contest, only to see the Intrépide tie it up with just under a minute left to play to force overtime. Pavel Konov led the Lions with a pair of goals while Brody Armstrong and Saviuk had one each. Meanwhile, on Sunday, Alexandre Côté had two goals while Konov, Kevin Altidor, Jeremy Wong, and Connor Gagnon each had one to lead the Lions to a 6-4 victory on the road over the Lévis Commandeurs.

Gagnon by the way hopes to have the same kind of success this weekend at the Telus Challenge as he had at a tournament last month in St. Léonard, when he scored four of the Lions’ six total markers during the event.

Chronicle, Jacques Pharand