GRANBY, Québec – Finally, there wasn’t that much action at the trading deadline in the Ligue nord-américaine de hockey this Tuesday. In fact, the biggest trade was made 24 hours earlier.

By trading to each other two of the best scorers of the LNAH, the Sherbrooke Saint-François and the Pont-Rouge Lois Jeans made the biggest move.   

Pont-Rouge sent Robert Guillet to Sherbrooke in return for Sylvain Deschâtelets. The last one was traded from theThetford Mines Isothermic to Sherbrooke a couple of days earlier. He played one game with his new team before he was traded again.

Robert Guillet

Guillet, who will be 38 later this month, had 15 goals and 41 points in 31 games this season. The right winger, who was drafted in the third round by the Montréal Canadiens in 1990, had 79 points in 43 games last year. He played in the American Hockey League, the ECHL, the International Hockey League, and in Europe before coming to the LNAH.

Deschâtelets had 36 points in 36 games in Pont-Rouge this season. The centerman played in the ECHL, the West Coast Hockey League and Europe prior to coming to the LNAH.

“I’m very happy”, said Guillet in Sherbrooke’s La Tribune daily paper. “Things were not going too good in Pont-Rouge. There was the suspension to (coach) Bobby Baril, than we were fined because we didn’t respect the salary cap and finally our pay check was cut because the team had financial problems. And, of course, we were losing…”

Sherbrooke general manager, Jean-François Grégoire, is happy with the moves he made.

“I wanted to have a natural scorer and we have it now with Guillet”, said Grégoire. “Plus, I wanted to improve our defensive and Simon Poirier (acquired from Thetford Mines in the Deschâtelets trade) will help us. I’m satisfied.”

For sure, Sherbrooke is serious. With nine games to play in the regular season, the Saint-François is two points behind the Trois-Rivières Caron et Guay, the first team place. Sherbrooke’s management has in mind the regular season championship but, most of all, the dream of winning the Futura Cup is very alive.

Surprisingly, Trois-Rivières didn’t do much to improve, neither did the Saint-Georges CRS Express, only one point behind the leader in the standing.

The Saguenay Marquis (four points behind Trois-Rivières) is supposed to be a better team after acquiring right winger Kevin Asselin from Thetford Mines. Two years ago, Asselin scored 49 goals in 52 games with Saint-Hyacinthe.

Saguenay’s management made it clear: they want to win it all this year.

NOTES: The Rivière-du-Loup CIMT lost Alexandre Jacques, who had 51 points in 35 games this season and who was the team best scorer, to Swiss… Daniel Bissonnette was fired as head coach of Thetford Mines and he resigned as general manager after that. Dan Groleau will finish the season behind the bench and the management in place will do the GM job for the rest of the season… Yannick Landry, of Rivière-du-Loup, joined the 500 points club when he had three assists last Friday in a 8-1 win over Trois-Rivières.

LNAH’s standing

                      GP                   PTS

            Trois-Rivières                     35               48

Saint-Georges                    35                47

Sherbrooke                        35                46

Saguenay                          34                44

Rivière-du-Loup                  35                34

Thetford Mines                   35                25

Pont-Rouge                        35                21

  Contact Michel.Tassé@prohockeynews.com